Gardaí are appealing for witnesses following a single-vehicle collision in which a 43-year-old man was killed after his jeep crashed through a ditch and ended up in a river in west Cork overnight.
The man was travelling on the R571 between Eyries and Castletownbere on the Beara peninsula when it veered off the road and broke through an earth and stone ditch.
The jeep fell more than 5m into the Keallincha river where it ended up on its roof, but it appears that the man was thrown from the vehicle on impact and was found a short distance away.
A motorist travelling the road at about 6am noticed the damage to the ditch and raised the alarm. The man was pronounced dead at the scene before his body was removed to Cork University Hospital for a postmortem.
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Gardaí have identified the man but will not be releasing his name until all his next of kin have been informed. It’s understood that he is originally from eastern Europe but had been living and working in the Castletowbere area for many years.
Gardaí closed the road and diversions were put in place to allow a Garda forensic crash investigator to examine the scene to try to establish why the single-vehicle incident happened.
Investigators have appealed to anyone who travelled on the road between 1am and 6am on Friday to contact them at Bantry Garda station on 027-20860 and they are particularly anxious to speak to anyone with dash cam or mobile phone footage.
The collision is the second recent fatal road crash in west Cork and follows the death of Jason Hegarty (24) from Ahakista who died when his jeep left the road and crashed into a field at Letterlickey between Bantry and Ballydehob in the early hours of Monday.
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