Shane O’Farrell was 23 when he was the victim of a hit-and-run near his home in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan. A law graduate, he had just submitted his master’s thesis and was enjoying a carefree cycle on that August evening in 2011.
Questions around how the crash happened soon turned to who was behind the wheel. It was Lithuanian Zigimantas Gridziuska, a man known to the Garda and the courts.
During his time in Ireland he had been before the courts many times and accumulated many convictions.
On the day he killed Shane and drove off, he had more than 40 convictions, including some in Northern Ireland.
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So how was he free to go out and kill? He had breached his bail conditions many times so why was he not in prison? And where was the justice for Shane when Gridziuska was before the court for the fatal hit-and-run but walked free, allowed return to his family in Lithuania?
Since 2011, the O’Farrell family has been seeking answers and has worked tirelessly to understand how the justice system failed their son and brother. His parents Lucia and Jim, and his sisters, Hannah, Pia, Gemma and Aimee were in Leinster House last Tuesday to hear Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan give a State apology to the family “for the fact that the criminal justice system did not protect him [Shane] as it should have”.
Gemma O’Farrell tells In the News about the family’s long campaign, how they were stonewalled and disrespected by branches and agencies of the State that should have helped them and how they persisted despite all that.
There are, however, still questions to be answered around the institutional failures in the justice system – not only how they relate to their brother’s case, but to others.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and John Casey.
