A distraught Cork mother has described how her ‘beautiful life’ was destroyed in an instant when a Polish taxi driver drove his car into the family on the final day of their UK holiday.
Elber Twomey spoke of her torment in the final day of the inquest into the death of her 16 month old baby boy Oisin, who was killed along with her husband Con and their unborn baby Elmer Marie in July 2012.
The 37-year-old teacher was left fighting for her own life after suicidal taxi driver Marek Wojciechowski smashed into the family car in Torquay in England.
Speaking to reporters after she was refused permission to make a statement to the inquest, heartbroken Twomey said the actions of the Pole that day ended her family’s ‘beautiful life.’
She said: “Our tragic crash with Marek claimed the lives of our beautiful little man, ‘baba’ Oisin, and his beautiful unborn sister.
“If that wasn’t tragic enough it also claimed the life of my darling Con on May 3 this year. I lost my everybody.”
The Cork schoolteacher criticized the way the case was handled by British police.
The Irish Independent reports that she was critical after the inquest of UK police for their actions in the lead-up to the tragedy.
She also pleaded with UK police to review their procedures for dealing with high-risk motorists.
Police counsel had objected to Twomey making a statement at the inquest as they believed the statement would ‘apportion blame’ to the police over their handling of the tragedy.
She later told reporters that police had been ‘completely wrong’ in how they had handled the 26-year-old Pole’s manic driving that day and claimed their intervention had ‘panicked’ the Pole in the seconds before the tragedy.
Twomey said: “I will always be of the opinion that the manner in which the police dealt with Marek that horrific day was completely wrong.
“I believe the police officer should have stopped his following and turned off his siren well before the crash barrier ended to avoid any head-on conflict.
“While I don’t blame the police officer involved personally for my tragic story, I do blame the police service. I am convinced they need to review their handling of how they deal with a missing person known to have left a suicidal note.
“The lack of this caution has cost me my entire family. My hope is that the police service will learn from our horrific story . . . that they will put the appropriate policies and training in place on how to deal with a driver who has expressed an intention to commit suicide.”
The heartbroken mother also told reporters that she did not blame the distraught taxi driver.
She added: “The poor man was unwell. He was no criminal. He had not robbed a bank or murdered anyone.”
The report adds that the Pole left a four-page suicide note and had circled a busy dual-carriageway 12 times outside Torquay. He drove into the Twomeys’ Volkswagen Golf car just seconds after a Devon policeman tried to pull him over.
Comments