At about 4.40am on New Year's Day, two men died in a collision on a high-quality stretch of the N26, near Ballina, Co Mayo. They were the first fatal road deaths of 2014. In the months since, Peter Murtagh has been investigating this crash and its aftermath. In the second instalment of a four-part series he looks back on the lives of the victims. One lived locally and drove a taxi; the other was visiting the town.
Gearóid Scully: Father, partner, local hero, taxi driver
Gearóid Scully was 47-years-old when a Mercedes coupe drove at high speed into his Skoda Superb taxi at around 4.40am on New Year's Day 2014, on the N26 Ballina-Foxford road in Co Mayo. The drivers of both vehicles died.
Taxi drivers don't always get a good press but in Ballina, a town of some 10,000 people, you won't find anyone who has a bad word to say about Scully, a working-class Dubliner who had moved to the town.
He was born Gary Scully in June 1966. His father was Gerard, an electrician, his mother Kathleen. His older sister was named Sharon.
Shortly after Gary’s birth, the family got a house on Cabra’s Carnlough Road, where another sister, Catherine, was born. A few years later, another, Pamela, arrived – much to the chagrin of Gary who really wanted a brother.
“You can bloody well send her back,” he announced to his parents. At 16, Gary got his wish when his brother, Andy, was born.
Scully’s father gave him his love of fishing, which started with family holidays in Donegal. He had a fish, a wrasse, tattooed onto one arm.
When Scully grew into adulthood and was allocated a flat in Ballymun, he met Pauline, his first partner, and she moved in with him. They had two boys, Alan (named after a family friend killed on the roads) and Gerard. Scully worked at times as a van driver and a forklift truck driver at a chilling plant in Finglas, and was also a maintenance man at the National College of Art and Design.
He was an active member of Sinn Féin. As sister Sharon noted: “He had a love of all things Irish – its music, culture, language – and believed that Ireland should be a united country.”
He adopted the gaelicised version of his name: Gearóid Ó Scolaí, and while some people called him Gearóid, to most he remained plain Scully, sometimes abbreviated to Skull.
Around 2000, Scully tired of Dublin's traffic and cost of living and – lured by his love of sea angling off Downpatrick Head – moved to Ballina, Co Mayo with his then partner Catherine. He settled in quickly, helping run the local Sinn Féin office and was a familiar figure about the place, selling the party's newspaper, An Phoblacht/Republican News, around the pubs. Not long after arriving in Ballina, he met Seán Redmond and together they started Celtic Cabs in 2007. Scully was one of life's doers, says Redmond.
“He saved two people, you know . . . One was a fellow standing, about to jump into the Moy; the other was a woman who fell down stairs and whose family called Scully before the ambulance because they trusted him more than anyone else. He tended to her while waiting for the ambulance.
“He would have been very larger than life. He was a legend in this town. There’s so many people who knew Scully who didn’t know him, if you know what I mean. He was a really lovely guy.”
When Scully’s relationship to Pauline failed, he had a relationship with Ann and through her, a son, Seán. Sadly that also ended, and he was unable to be the father to Seán that he wanted. But he married Catherine after they moved to Mayo.When she became seriously ill with an aneurysm, Scully nursed her back to health, but they grew apart eventually.
One night in February 2012, Lorraine Devlin, a 46-year-old who worked at the sandwich counter of her local Centra, went to Paddy Mac's pub in Ballina. It was there that she spotted Scully. "He was inside with another driver, Keith Brogan, and he says to me 'come in for a drink' and I said 'no, no, I'm goin'. . . 'Ah, come in for a drink!' says he and so I did go in for a drink and do you know, I sat at the counter and I spoke to him all night," recalls Lorraine.
She talks easily about her feelings for Skull (her name for him) and cries easily as well when remembering their time together and their plans for the future, which involved retiring to a cottage with a view over Killala Bay.
“Skull” and “Lo Lo” (his name for her) quickly became a couple. “We could just walk around the town holding hands, like; people used to say ‘jeez, you’re like two kids’,” Lorraine remembers.
They got tattoos. Lorraine had a skull engraved onto her right middle finger. “You know, that’s better than even putting a ring on you,” said Scully. He had two images superimposed into one and tattooed on to his right forearm.
“He says to me ‘I’ll get the two things I love most in the world’. That was the Easter Lily and the Cross of Lorraine in the middle of it,” Lorraine remembers through tears.
Before she met Scully, Lorraine had separated after 24 years of marriage. She was mother of three children. Scully was her big second chance.
Lorraine had never been fishing when she met Scully, but he badgered her into trying it. He was an accomplished, trophy winning angler and member of the Connacht team. “I loved it,” says Lorraine, still a little surprised at herself. “I absolutely loved it.” She became a dab hand, coming second in the women’s section in a skate competition in Westport. “Skull was thrilled!”
In July 2013, they moved in together. At the time of his death, Scully had never been happier, something he expressed through a sign he put up in the hall. “An old fisherman lives here with the best catch of his life,” it read.
“We had it all planned out,” says Lorraine. “I could see the future ahead of us. I was only with him for two years but, it’s a funny thing, it felt like we were together forever, you know.”
In June, on what would have been his birthday, Gearóid Scully’s ashes were scattered on the sea off Downpatrick Head by family and friends.
Terence Beagan: Music-lover, artist, son and soulmate
Forty-three-year-old Terence Beagan was behind the wheel of a maroon Mercedes coupe when it crashed into Gearóid Scully’s silver Skoda Superb on New Year’s morning, 2014, killing them both.
Tributes from Beagan’s friends after his death described a cheery, happy-go-lucky man. Stories were told about his love of travel, passion for music and kindness to family members. “He was a very good brother – always taking care of his brother and sister,” Fr Neil O’Donoghue said at his funeral Mass.
Terence Beagan’s life got off to a shaky start. He narrowly escaped death from meningitis aged two, when he was given just hours to live and his parents believed they might never see him again.
He was born in 1970 to Terry and Maeve Beagan. Their family home was in Ravensdale, north of Dundalk, Co Louth. The family ran a successful business in Dundalk, Beagans Limited, which helps businesses achieve customs clearance.
Young Terry Beagan, who had a brother, Michael, and sister, Joanne, didn’t make a career for himself in the family business, however. He had other ideas.
At school, he was good at art, regularly bring home drawings, often of comic book heroes, to show his parents.
This interest saw him, just into his 20s, head to Los Angeles to make a name for himself in the art world there. Life in LA turned out to be more painting and decorating than oils on canvas.
He followed that with a spell in Australia, also working as a painter and decorator. When he came home, his interest in music saw him set up Loop Studios, which operates from a basement known as Space 28 in Dublin’s North Lotts.
“He’s still there in funny ways,” said his business partner Gareth Desmond not long after Terence’s death in the Ballina crash. “I’ll turn around and there’ll be an audio clip he was fixing.”
The Loop is a small independent recording studio; rickety stairs lead to a dimly lit a warren of rooms, walls covered in band posters and stickers. Terence fitted the place out with Desmond’s dad.
Desmond is a recording engineer. Beagan did the promotional work and managed bands. He did this with passion and optimism: forever arranging gigs in far-off locations, often driving the bands there and back in the small hours.
Terence Beagan liked to mentor young artists. He gave encouragement to Vertigo, a U2 tribute band, and helped run Kopek, a grunge-rock outfit. He helped set up a local radio station for Ringsend and Irishtown in 2011.Beagan liked his work, liked seeing creativity flow.
Musician, photographer and video artist Liam Noonan, who was working with Beagan and the band The Bloody Quills at the time of Beagan’s death, wrote afterwards about Beagan’s influence on him, on Noonan’s own website. “He was a passionate encourager, promoter and support to many musicians and artists.”
Terence Beagan and Gareth Desmond got on well. “Out of 15 years working with him, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of arguments we had and on the fingers of the other, the time it took to make up to each other.”
“If somebody asked Terry to do something, he’d never refuse.”
Being on the road with bands wasn’t always smooth, but Desmond recalls how Beagan was unflappable, no matter what problems arose.
After Beagan’s death, Desmond wrote a lengthy appreciation of his former partner on the Loop’s website.“We drove the length and breadth of the country together (and a few other countries too!) bringing the music we loved to anyone who’d listen, sometimes that might only be two people but for Terry it was always worth it.
“Over the years I worked with Terry he showed himself to be a man of incredible character. I could trust him with anything and if ever I needed any help or advice Terry was always there for me with intelligent and calm council.”
Karen McHugh was Terence Beagan’s girlfriend. She was a widowed mother with a daughter; he was unmarried and had no children. They had just two years together before his death.
Afterwards, McHugh wrote how he had come “bounding into my life”. “Yet it seems like I have known you forever. . . Even when we argued, we couldn’t stay away from each other for long,” she wrote in a letter to him read at his funeral by her sister, Fiona.
“You are my soulmate: I have never met anyone who could understand me like you did. You talked so easily, and so honestly; you were such a warm, gentle and affectionate man. You brought so much peace to my hectic world – always telling me to slow down, take it easy, to chill a little.
“You taught me to appreciate the beauty around me; our wonderful walks, your love and understanding of art, of architecture, of music. You taught me to trust again and to believe in the goodness of people.I will miss lying in those wonderful strong arms which felt like the safest place on earth . . . My world will never be the same again.”
On December 31st, 2013, the day before he died, Terence Beagan posted what would be his final message on the Loop’s Facebook page. “Have a Rockin New Year,” it said.
Anatomy of a Car Crash: Part 3 - The autopsy is published on Tuesday, December 9th in The Irish Times and on irishtimes.com
