A woman who knocked down a three-year-old girl, leaving her with a fractured skull, smoked cannabis the night before, and initially blamed the child’s mother for the accident, a court has heard.
Charlene Lawlor (33) of Derry Road, Crumlin 12, pleaded guilty to careless driving causing serious bodily injury and “drug driving” contrary to Section 4.1A of the Road Traffic Act in respect of the incident which took place on the 21st of June 2022 on the Longmile Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12.
Garda Rebecca Durney agreed with Aideen Collard BL, prosecuting, that Lawlor, who has four children of her own, hit the little girl, who a witness said was “thrown into the air like a rag doll” when she drove up a bus lane to the left of a number of cars which had stopped to let the child, her sibling, and their mother cross the road.
Judge Martina Baxter heard that the injured child, who also sustained a bleed to the brain, a clot and superficial cuts on her body, was on a bright pink scooter about 3 feet in front of her mother, who was holding her younger sister’s hand when the impact took place.
The court heard that a motorist who had stopped to let the family cross jumped out of her vehicle when she saw what happened and told the mother, who was holding the child’s seemingly lifeless body, to get in her car so she could drive them to Crumlin Children’s Hospital.
The girl’s mother, who did not submit a victim impact statement, said that her daughter now “finds it hard to play as much and feels dizzy sometimes” and is “not the same as she was before the accident”.
The motorist who conveyed the family to the A&E said that she “thought the child was dead”, and that when she returned to the scene found it “bizarre” that Lawlor had claimed that the child was “alright” and that she had been “on the phone to the fire brigade”.
The woman said that the car Lawlor was driving was “like a blur, it was going so quick”, with the child’s mother saying that she didn’t see it at all.
Lawlor said she had been going 50 to 60 kilometres per hour, which both sides agreed was “driving at a speed that was too fast in all the circumstances,” Ms Collard said.
Lawlor said that the “child came out of nowhere”; however, Judge Baxter noted that the scooter was “bright pink” and would have been very visible.
Ms Collard said that Lawlor, who was living in a homeless shelter at the time, had 21.3 nanograms of cannabis in her system when she hit the child.
When she was interviewed by Gardaí, she said, “I blame the mother, she should have been more careful and not let the child go ahead of her, it could have been a bus coming, a child of that age.”
When Judge Baxter inquired as to the child’s current condition, she heard that she still attends hospital regularly but that the “family’s English wouldn’t be great,” so that updates are somewhat limited.
Lawlor has eight previous convictions under the Road Traffic Act, including failure to display a tax disk, driving while using a mobile phone, no insurance, failure to produce an insurance certificate, and no NCT.
Defending counsel Keith Spencer BL, argued that his client is “very remorseful and regretful” and has now taken a different view over who was to blame and “regrets anything that she said in terms of victim blaming.”
Lawlor, he argued, has “limited education” and had lost both her parents by the age of fifteen.
She is “in a much more stable and positive place now that she is housed” and wishes to take up employment.
Having heard the facts, Judge Baxter adjourned the case until the 20th of October and ordered urine samples at the expense of the accused, saying, “If she can purchase cannabis, she can pay for a urinalysis.”
The court enquired as to whether the child’s mother was aware of Lawlor’s previous remarks, which had placed the blame on her for what had taken place.