Miracle escape

NEAR MISS Pat Staunton stands in his front garden, just metres from where a truck mounted the wall and missed his roadside house by centimetres. The driver of the truck had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Miracle escape


Ballyheane man lucky to be alive after truck crashes into garden

Edwin McGreal

A TRUCK driver died last Thursday as his truck went off the main Castlebar to Ballinrobe road at Cunniker in Ballyheane, narrowly missing the home of a local man.
Joseph Sheerin (59) from Clonmellon, Navan, Co Meath was pronounced dead on arrival at Mayo General Hospital last Thursday but local Ballyheane man Pat Staunton was extremely fortunate to escape unharmed from the incident.
The vehicle being driven by Mr Sheerin went off the road and into Staunton’s garden at Cunniker, less than half a mile on the Ballintubber side of the village of Ballyheane at approximately 12.20pm.
Pat Staunton was in his garden at the time and had a narrow escape as the truck avoided both him and his house.
“I was cutting the hedge with an electric clippers and I was on the left hand side of the house. I’m deaf in my right ear after having a brain tumour removed some years ago so I didn’t hear the lorry in difficulty,” explained Mr Staunton, who had received the ‘all clear’ from cancer just the day before the incident.
“I didn’t realise anything was coming until the lorry was almost on top of me and I jumped out of the way and missed it only by a few feet. It stopped on the pond we have in the garden. If it was five minutes later I would have been at a part of the hedge where I would have no hope of getting out of the way. I was very, very fortunate.”
While Gardaí in Castlebar were unable to report the cause of death of Mr Sheerin ahead of a post-mortem, it is suspected that the deceased suffered a heart attack while at the wheel, forcing him off-road. That he managed at the last second to avoid the gable of the house, where Pat Staunton’s partner Helen was at the time, was described as ‘heroic’.
“You can see that he managed to swerve at the last moment to avoid the house and avoid harm coming. He was obviously in a lot of difficulty but he managed, somehow, to avoid the house and that was heroic,” said Mr Staunton.
For Mr Staunton’s partner Helen, the sound of the truck approaching their house made her extremely fearful for Pat. 
“I was in the kitchen and I could hear the lorry in difficulty. I knew Pat was outside and I was very worried when I went out and saw the lorry halted in the garden. A car was coming behind the lorry and that couple pulled into the garden as well. The man from that car went into the lorry and turned off the engine but he wasn’t able to get the driver out and it was clear that he was in danger.
”The ambulance arrived very quickly, within seven minutes. But they couldn’t do anything for the driver. We live very close to the road - we can always hear the traffic buzzing past. But I knew from the sounds of the lorry approaching that it was in difficulty.”
The main N84 road in Ballyheane was closed for most of the day on Thursday after the accident.