NI man appears in court charged over Co. Louth crash that killed three

By David Young, PA

A man in his 20s has been charged in connection with a crash that claimed the lives of a mother and son and a young footballer.

The three victims, all from Northern Ireland, died in the crash just across the Irish border in Co Louth in the early hours of Saturday.

The man is due to appear at a special sitting of Dundalk District Court on Monday morning.

The three people who died have been named locally as Mary Faxton, who was in her 80s, and her son Kevin Faxton, who was in his 50s, and Bryan Magill, who was in his 20s.

The two older victims were both occupants in one of the cars involved in the collision on the N1 at Carrickcarnan at about 2.15am on Saturday.

The younger man was travelling in the other car. Another man in his 20s, who sustained non-life threatening injuries in the crash, was also in that car.

Mr Magill was from Newry, while the Faxtons were from the nearby Co Armagh village of Bessbrook.

The crash was one of a series of fatal incidents on Ireland's roads over the weekend.

Four other people died.

A 16-year-old girl was killed after the car she was travelling in struck a wall in Oughterard, Co Galway, in the early hours of Sunday.

In Co Monaghan, a male pedestrian aged in his 20s suffered fatal injuries when he was struck by a lorry on the N54 between Monaghan and Clones on Saturday morning.

On Friday night, a man and a woman in their 60s died in a crash involving a car and a jeep on the N55 in Ballinagh, Co Cavan.