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# remorse
Mother whose 8-year-old daughter was killed in crash forgives teen driver
“We had a bit of a hug and I gave him one of Zoe’s loom bands.”
THE MOTHER OF an 8-year-old girl who died after a car crash last year says she forgives the young man who was driving the other car.
Zoe Scannell from Limerick was killed following the crash in Cork and her mother, Alisha, was seriously injured.
The 18-year-old driver received a two-year-suspended last month after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving.
Ian Lawlor O’Donovan was a learner driver at the time of the crash and was unaccompanied.
Speaking about the case on Limerick’s Live 95 FM, Alisha Scannell said: “On the bright side we were very lucky. A lot of the time these court cases drag on for years, I’m not even a year into it and it’s all been concluded and finalised.
On top of that, that young boy, it was a tragic accident. He held up his hands and pleaded guilty and I’ve forgiven him.
“We’ve spoken and we’ve moved on from it and to know that he was remorseful and that it hurt him as much as it hurt me meant a lot to us.
“We were a family of three, there was me, my partner and Zoe so trying to figure out how to live as a family of two now, yenno, but still keeping Zoe in our life, it’s a learning process.”
Remorse in his eyes
Scannell added, “For a long time I did want to meet him, it was in my mind, and I did want to know that he wasn’t a yobbo, and that he did have remorse for what had happened.
Seeing the remorse in his eyes, he was genuinely crushed, this not only ruined and destroyed our family, it did for his too.
“I remember one thing he said to me: ‘I’m an only child too. I know how important one child is to their mum’.
“We had a bit of a hug and I gave him one of Zoe’s loom bands, and I think there was a little bit of a connection there between the two of us, and that we know what each other is going through. Hopefully we’ll make contact again in the future.”
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