Recalling the events of a deeply tragic week

Recalling the events of a deeply tragic week


From the crash scene to the first court appearance, The Mayo News was present as the tragedy that befell the young Chada brothers came to light in Mayo last summer

Neill O'Neill

THE sound of wailing sirens was the first sign of something untoward. Sirens weren’t unusual but the continuous procession of them up the streets of Westport left everyone with no doubt that the emergency services were responding to something major.
It was a Monday afternoon in mid-summer, and in The Mayo News everyone was hard at work on deadline day. Notwithstanding that, I decided to follow the trail to see what was going on.
I had no idea where I was headed, and could never have anticipated what I would be greeted with, but July 29, 2013, is a day I won’t soon forget.
It was shortly after 3.30pm and the roads around Belclare and Rosbeg were all closed, cordoned off by fire trucks and their personnel, but I knew the back way down to whatever was happening near the sea.
I arrived around the corner at Moran’s house to see a plethora of emergency vehicles surrounding what looked like a regular accident scene. Eileen Moran was outside and explained she had heard a bang but wasn’t sure of other details. I left my car at her house and walked up to the the avenue of trees that shades the road between Kiely’s garden and SeΡn O’Malley’s house.

Grim discovery
Nobody noticed my presence nor did they care. It seemed to be a single vehicle crash. I saw a man being loaded into the back of an ambulance just yards away, he was distressed looking but conscious and seemingly not badly injured. That man was Sanjeev Chada. There was a flurry of activity around the car, indicating somebody else might be inside. I kept a respectable distance, but whatever was happening, it was still unfolding.
It was then I met SeΡn Foy, driving from the scene. He had been one of the first to encounter the accident. I knew when he rolled down the window that something was terribly wrong. His expression, the colour on his face, said it all. He informed me that when they opened the boot there was two little boys dead inside. I quickly understood that he was implying that they hadn’t died in the crash.
He and another man had opened the door of the car, which had smashed into the wall of Kiely’s garden, having been intentionally driven across the main road from the small local road on the opposite side. The driver had a rope around his neck and was pulling tightly on it. It had been tied to the headrest, an apparent suicide attempt, but the headrest had broken off in the impact, leaving the rope slack.
It took physical force to take the rope from him. In court later that week, ligature marks could be clearly seen around Chada’s neck.
After calling the office to explain the significance of what I was witnessing, the next few hours flew by. The whole country had been looking for Eoghan and Ruairi Chada, and here I was looking on as their tragic story took a bitter, final twist.
Before the boys’ bodies had been discovered, Sanjeev Chada had used SeΡn Foy’s phone, having asked for it, to make a call. Minutes later Foy’s phone rang. It was Carlow Garda Station. Chada had called his wife, mumbling to her what he had done, and she passed this information onto the Gardaí, who in turn called back the number he had dialled from.
The news SeΡn Foy had for those officers was not what they wanted to hear. Seconds earlier, after noticing a child seat and deciding to check the car for occupants other than the driver amid smoke and dust from the deployed airbags, the bodies of two children had been discovered in the boot.
Garda Brian Kilkelly from Westport, since retired, arrived promptly on the scene. Attempts were made to help the children, but they had been dead for hours. Their lives had ended in a quiet country lane in Ballintubber, sometime earlier that day.

Media frenzy
Kathleen Chada had found out about the cruel fate her husband had visited on their sons. The child alert was cancelled. The grim news was out. The eyes of the nation were now on Westport and Mayo.
The following morning, The Mayo News carried the only eyewitness account of what had transpired at the scene in Rosbeg. For days, up to a dozen media outlets – from Sky to RTÉ – camped across from our offices, beside the Garda Station where Sanjeev Chada was being held. As speculation swirled, The Mayo News became a media hub for fact-checked and authenticated information for the national and international press. We were local, so were those at the heart of the investigation and the witnesses.
On Thursday evening of that week, August 1, there was a large crowd and plenty of media gathered outside Swinford Courthouse as Chada arrived, handcuffed and flanked by senior Gardaí, for a special court appearance. A smaller crowd had gathered outside Westport Garda Station earlier as he was driven away one final time, eager to glimpse the man whose name had dominated headlines for the whole of that week.
Dressed in clothes that had been purchased in Tesco in Westport, Chada was led straight in the front door of the courthouse. He took up a seat in the corner of the courtroom, where he never lifted his head while listening to his solicitor James Hanley, but acknowledged his understanding of the instructions he was being given with soft nods.
His eyes remained closed for most of the hearing, but he was moved into the line of sight of Judge Mary Devins when proceedings commenced.
Also present to give evidence was Detective Sergeant Gary Walsh, from Castlebar, who earlier that month had also led the investigation into the double murder of two other brothers, Jack and Tommy Blaine in Castlebar. The parallels were haunting, the fact the crimes so close together, unprecedented in these parts. He gave evidence of the arrest of Sanjeev Chada on two charges of murder, saying that Mr Chada made no reply to the first charge, but to the second charge had replied: “I’m so sorry, I really wish I hadn’t done it.”
Supt Aiden Foley, since transferred from Westport, brought the charges on behalf of the State. The only others in the courtroom that night, apart from members of the press, were two local Swinford girls, who had inadvertently been corralled into the court when they found themselves caught on the wrong side of the group leading Chada in.
Sitting beside RTÉ’s Western Correspondent Pat McGrath, who had barely been home in days, we observed Chada’s demeanour, the marks on his neck and the look on his face. It was all unforgettable.
Sanjeev Chada was remanded to Castlerea Prison, driven there directly from the court by Garda Brian Kilkelly along with Sergeant Pat Lavelle and Detective Garda John Flannery, all stationed in Westport. A request that he be put on suicide watch and segregated from other prisoners was made to the court, and was maintained at numerous subsequent remand hearings.
Eoghan and Ruairi Chada were laid to rest in their native Ballinkillen, Co, Carlow, on Friday afternoon, August 2, 2013.
Last Tuesday, their father was given two life sentences one month ahead of his scheduled trial, when he pleaded guilty to their murders during an arraignment hearing in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin.