'Just five minutes after we left our home this coach slammed into it'
An official investigation is underway after an Aircoach bus slammed into the side of John O'Brien's family's home at Brackbawn, Co Limerick yesterday. Mr O'Brien said: "Bins were blown into smithereens."
Thursday January 31 2008
John O'Brien described how the Aircoach bus travelling between Kilbehenny and Skeheenarinky on the main Cork to Dublin road overturned and hit the front wall and entrance to his house.
The couple and their one-year-old child Jack had left the house just the incident happened at Brackbawn, Kilbehenny, Co Limerick at 9.15am yesterday.
Six people were rushed to hospital after the coach skidded on a patch of ice. One passenger sustained a broken leg, but the other five passengers and the driver of the bus escaped serious injury.
Mr O'Brien said: "I left the house at nine o' clock. Three or four minutes later I got a phone call to say a bus had crashed through the front wall of the house and just missed the kitchen by a couple of feet.
"If it had come five minutes sooner myself, my wife and my one child would have been inside the kitchen. We would have been having breakfast by the window that the bus just missed. It missed it by a couple of feet.
He told Newstalk: "Half of the bus is outside the wall and the other half is on the lawn.
"The gate was thrown into the middle of the lawn. If it was any other time my son would be out on the lawn. I was only after carrying out two wheelie bins to the wall and the two bins were blown into smithereens."
He added: "My wife is still in a state of shock. She's due in eight weeks time. She's a bit stressed out about the whole thing. She's due our second child so you can imagine the shock of it all.
"There have been a number of accidents straight outside the house.
"It's a very bad stretch. In the last 10 years there have been four or five people killed outside the house."
Two passengers were taken to Cork University Hospital (CUH), two were taken to Mallow General and the remaining two were taken to South Tipperary General.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said the two patients taken to Mallow had been discharged before lunch yesterday.
The two patients taken to CUH were stable while those taken to Tipperary had very minor injuries.
Fire engines from Mitchelstown, Cahir, Fermoy and Kilmallock attended the scene along with a fleet of ambulances.
A spokesman for Mitchelstown gardai said no other vehicle was involved in the crash. An investigation into the cause of the accident is now under way.
- Michelle McDonagh
