Two men have died after the car in which they were travelling left the road and crashed into a flooded ditch near Ballina, Co Mayo.<\/p>\n
The pair, who have not yet been publicly named, are both in their late teens and lived with their families in Ballina. They were both pronounced dead at the scene.<\/p>\n
Three other people \u2013 two males in their mid teens and a woman in her late teens \u2013 were taken by ambulance to Mayo University Hospital. <\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed said their injuries are not life-threatening.<\/p>\n
The crash took place at about 4.15am at a location known as Laghtadawanannagh, on a local link road near Ballina. There were no other vehicles involved. <\/p>\n
The minor route links the Killala road out of Ballina with the Ballina to Crossmolina road.<\/p>\n
Michael Loftus, a member of Mayo County Council, said his \u201cheart goes out\u201d to the families of the dead men. \u201cThis tragedy has dealt them and the entire community them a shocking, numbing blow from which it will be difficult to recover\u201d.<\/p>\n
Loftus, a leading member of the Grainne Uaile Sub-Aqua Club and Search and Recovery Unit, said emergency services personnel faced distressing scenes when they arrived at the site of the crash. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe first responders have to be commended for their actions in hugely difficult and trying circumstances,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
A full Garda investigation is underway and postmortem examinations are to take place later at Mayo University Hospital in Castlebar.<\/p>\n
The road has been closed for an examination by Garda forensic collision investigators and local traffic diversions were put in place. <\/p>\n
The crash vehicle was removed from the site on Sunday afternoon for a full technical investigation.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed are appealing for witnesses to come forward.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information, including dashcam footage, is asked to contact Ballina Garda station on 096 20560, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any Garda station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have died after the car in which they were travelling left the road and crashed into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,44157,18,13,14,6,789,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-362711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-demonstration","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-horizontal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116155129941268600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362711","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=362711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}