TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen visited grieving colleagues of Garda Gary McLoughlin yesterday.
Mr Cowen, who was on an official visit to Co Derry, crossed the Border to sign a book of condolences at Buncrana Garda station and pay tribute to the young officer who died earlier in the day following a head-on collision when his patrol vehicle was struck by a car.
Mr Cowen said he wanted to convey his sympathy in person. “A young garda, in the line of his duty, has lost his life.”
Garda McLoughlin (24) died at 2am in Letterkenny General Hospital 24 hours after he was taken there along with his 23-year-old passenger, Garda Bernard McLoughlin – no relation – and the 24-year-old driver of the other car.
He and Garda Bernard McLoughlin, who was said to be “stable” in hospital with a broken leg, became involved in a search for a red Opel Astra, after it was seen driving at high speed from a filling station near Buncrana by two senior detectives in an unmarked Garda car.
The detectives, who recognised the driver as a person wanted for questioning by gardaí, followed the Opel.
They called up assistance as the Opel, heading in the direction of Letterkenny, turned off on to a series of side roads. When it reappeared on the main road it was heading towards Bridgend and Derry.
Gary and Bernard McLoughlin had responded to their colleagues’ alert and were driving from Bridgend in their marked patrol car when they saw the Opel speeding towards them on the wide road which has a hard shoulder on each side.
Gary McLoughlin pulled over further to his own side, on to the hard shoulder but the other vehicle careered across and crashed into the front at the driver’s side. The force of the impact was such that the Opel’s engine was ripped from its casing and thrown several metres.
The patrol car had a stinger – a device for puncturing cars – in the boot but senior gardaí said it wasn’t deployed and a situation in which it could be deployed had not arisen.
As doctors fought throughout Sunday to save him, community leaders and colleagues gathered for a special evening Mass in Buncrana Garda station to pray for Gary. His parents, Noel and Una, left the hospital to join in the prayers but they had to rush back to their son’s bedside when his condition deteriorated.
The driver of the Opel was still in hospital last night. His condition was said to be stable.
Supt William Johnston, who is heading the Garda investigation into the incident, paid a glowing tribute to the dead man and his passenger, who is a native of Gurteen, Co Sligo, and attached to Buncrana for three years.
Supt Johnston said: “They were both fine officers and very involved in the community. Gary had met a lovely local girl and they were very serious about each other.
“He was a tall, slim lad with reddish hair and he had a lovely smile on his face.”
He said Bernard McLoughlin was involved in community policing and regularly visited the schools in Buncrana and took care of the interests of the elderly.
Garda Gary McLoughlin, a native of Fenagh, near Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, had recently moved in with his girlfriend, a third-year construction technology student at Letterkenny IT whom he met two years ago.
Friends said they were very much in love and Gary was overjoyed when 23-year-old Shauna Bradley, of Buncrana, agreed to set up home with him.
The Tricolour flew at half-mast over Buncrana council offices yesterday as a mark of respect to the dead officer.
Gary McLoughlin, the youngest member of a farming family, is survived by a brother, Enda, and a sister, Tracey.
Padraig Leyden, principal at St Phelim’s Vocational School, Ballinamore, where Gary did his Leaving Cert in 2003, said: “He was a perfectly normal student – hard-working and fun-loving. He liked a social life but was serious about his studies at the same time.”
Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis was due to carry our a postmortem yesterday.
Garda Ombudsman investigators were called to make inquiries. A spokesman said they were satisfied from the evidence that the Garda could take the lead part in the investigation.