Four young people were recovering in hospital today after their car cleared a four foot-high wall and crashed into a canal in Clare.
The three men and one woman, all aged in their 20s, were in a car at 6am going through Killaloe towards O'Briens bridge over the River Shannon.
Their car hit a number of buildings, a telephone pole and a street kerb. It then left a skid mark of almost 125 metres before going over a four-foot high wall near the approach to the bridge. The wall was left almost completely damaged.
Superintendent Tony Connolly of Killaloe Garda Station said that when the car began to sink in the 10-foot-deep canal waters, two of the men and a woman managed to escape.
“The driver was trapped inside behind the wheel,” he said.
John Cassidy, a local businessman who heard the car scraping against the wall near his house, jumped into the canal to save the man.
He held the driver's head up above water until the emergency services arrived and pulled him out of the car through the back window.
Superintendent Connolly praised Mr Cassidy for saving the life of the driver with the help of another man, Ross Cantalon from Dublin.
“He did excellent work,” he said.
The four people, who are all from Killaloe area, were taken to Limerick Regional Hospital, where their injuries were not said to be life-threatening.
The accident scene was attended by coastal services, search and rescue, gardaí and ambulance crews.
Killaloe is on the border of Clare and Tipperary and its canal was used by boats travelling from Dublin to Limerick to bypass a dangerous stretch of the River Shannon.
However, it became redundant in 1929 when the Ardnacrusha hydro-electric dam raised the level of the river's waters.
PA