{"id":123258,"date":"2025-10-15T08:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/123258\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T08:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T08:46:09","slug":"ballycastle-crash-inquest-clare-smyth-and-daughter-bethany-were-killed-in-the-collision-outside-their-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/123258\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballycastle crash inquest: Clare Smyth and daughter Bethany were killed in the collision outside their home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Phone was plugged into vehicle charger immediately prior to impact, inquest told\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Scene of the collision that killed Clare Smyth (top right) and her daughter Bethany (bottom right)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/de0e9650-7ab8-4459-84c1-c50170b4c1ea.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Scene of the collision that killed Clare Smyth (top right) and her daughter Bethany (bottom right)<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The driver of a tractor involved in a collision with a quad bike which resulted in the death of a mother and her three-year-old daughter accessed Instagram on his phone eight seconds before impact, an inquest has been told.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Clare Smyth (35) and her daughter, Bethany, were killed in the collision outside their home on Whitepark Road in Ballycastle on May 12, 2020, while a second daughter was left with critical injuries and spent 102 days in hospital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phone was plugged into vehicle charger immediately prior to impact, inquest told Scene of the collision that killed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[72211,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,75007,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-123258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-antrim-news","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-mark-bain","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}