A man involved in a 170 km an hour car race in which a priest and two other men were killed on the M50 has been jailed for two years by Judge Desmond Hogan at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Ernest Gore (21), Dingle Road, Cabra, Dublin, pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment on March 11th, 2001. He had no previous convictions but has since been convicted of driving without insurance twice in incidents that predated this accident.
Father David Boylan (35) died when one of the speeding cars lost control and smashed into his Opel Vectra travelling on the opposite side of the motorway. The two occupants of the speeding car, Robert Fitzsimmons (27) and Jason Nugent (19), were also killed instantly.
Gore, the then 18-year-old driver of the second "racing" car, managed to stop his vehicle after he collided with a Toyota Hyundai driven by another person.
Judge Hogan, who also disqualified Gore from driving for 10 years, said that while there were mitigating factors, such as his young age and expression of remorse, if he balanced these against the aggravating factors a custodial sentence had to imposed.