The three sisters left with catastrophic injuries after a crash on an Irish motorway that killed five teenage boys ‘who boasted about joyriding days before smash’ have today been pictured.
Niamh and Alma Kinsella, who are in their 30s, are fighting for their lives in hospital after a gang of joyriders, who were driving the wrong way down the motorway, smashed into them.
Sister Ella Hendricken, who is in her 20s, was also seriously injured in the crash as well as her seven-year-old nephew.
Niamh and Alma are understood to have been in the front of the vehicle while the child and Ella were in the back of the car when the collision happened shortly before 3am.
The three sisters and a seven-year-old boy were on their way to Dublin Airport ahead of a family wedding in Britain.
Ella is understood to have been working as a social worker in Carlow while Niamh is understood to be a PE teacher at a local school.
Locals have described the family as ‘lovely’ and ‘quiet’.
The boys who died after their stolen BMW smashed into a Hyundai on Sunday had been ‘terrorising’ several communities with break-ins and car robberies over the previous fortnight.
Left to right: Ella Hendricken, Niamh Kinsella and Alma Kinsella, who all sustained catastrophic injuries after a crash on an Irish motorway that killed five teenage boys ‘who boasted about joyriding days before smash’
Kamil Pustkowski was one of five teenagers to die in the collision
Three sisters and a seven-year-old boy had been travelling to Dublin Airport ahead of a family wedding in the UK when they were seriously injured in a head-on collision with a BMW
All five of the teenage boys – reportedly aged between 15 and 17 – travelling in the BMW died and were identified as Kamil Pustkowski, Joe Carthy, Jeremy O’Brien, Alex McCarthy and Jack Kennedy.
They died in the two-car collision on the M9, in County Kildare, on Sunday morning.
Father Tom Little, from a parish in Carlow, said today that the family of those who suffered injuries are ‘bereft with sadness’.
He told the Irish Times: ‘It is a terrible, sad event. It’s very hard to comprehend what’s happened. Everybody is hoping that those that are injured will make a full recovery.’
The group of joyriders were suspected of multiple car thefts and burglaries, as well as other serious anti-social activities across the Kildare and Carlow regions for at least the past two weeks.
They often posted videos of themselves being chased by gardaí. One video shared before their deaths filmed the rearview mirror of a car and was captioned with the words, ‘wrong way.’
In a clip posted on TikTok, Kamil Pustkowski can be seen playing loud music and shouting as he films the reflection in his wing mirror, which shows the flashing blue lights of a police car chasing after him.
Alex McCarthy was one of the five boys who died in the collision in County Kildare on Sunday morning
Joe Carthy also died in the crash on the M9 motorway
Jeremy O’Brien was one of five teenagers to lose his life in the collision
Jack Kennedy was the fifth teenage boy to lose his life in the crash yesterday
Kamil Pustkowski is heard saying ‘that’s a sick video boys’ as he attempts to escape the pursuing Garda. The video is captioned: ‘They got rammed get up. Cupra smoked,’ which is slang for ‘escaped’.
In a separate post, the teenager can be seen shakily filming his dashboard as the speedometer increases.
And in other footage, Kamil Pustkowski films out the view from the rear windscreen of a car as police again give chase with flashing blue lights. The video is captioned: ‘No panic zone here.’
Meanwhile, in other social media activity reviewed by the Daily Mail, one of the other boys, Jack Kennedy, has posted images of himself smoking marijuana and wearing balaclavas.
It comes after the Irish justice minister Jim O’Callaghan warned on Monday that criminals driving the wrong way down motorways will ‘end up in jail or in the grave’.
Mr O’Callaghan also said he was seriously considering new legislation to create a specific offence for those who drive the wrong way down a motorway and promised that pursuit training for gardaí will begin this year.
The Daily Mail has since confirmed the teenagers previously shared pictures of the tools they used to steal the vehicles. The high-powered BMW they were driving on the night of the horror smash had been stolen earlier that night and was spotted in several areas near Kildare before the crash.
The scene on the M9 northbound at Junction 3 in Co Kildare
Gardaí are confident the same group of young men had carried out a burglary in the area just hours before they died.
Garda investigators are also probing whether they were part of a number of attempted car robberies in the same region over the course of the night.
All five of the dead teenagers were wearing masks when gardaí came upon the grisly crash scene.
Friends of the teenagers posted pictures of the young men wearing balaclavas and driving cars at dangerous speeds.
One video posted in tribute to Kamil Pustkowski showed a man carrying out dangerous manoeuvres in a vehicle with the comment, ‘this one’s for you, Kamil’.
In another social media post, someone published a picture of a balaclava with the caption: ‘Your bally (sic) you gave me the other day. My heart’s in bits. Please, man. Don’t do this to us, Joe.’
Security sources told how the five youngsters were part of a growing group of teenagers who have been trying to ‘one up’ each other by posting more and more dangerous videos on social media.
‘These young guys have been terrorising communities for weeks if not longer,’ a source told the Daily Mail. ‘They go out and target cars they believe don’t have immobilisers and then go out joyriding.
‘Most of the time they were wearing masks or balaclavas but at times they’d show their faces. They did not care if they were caught as they knew they were underage and that there was little the courts system could do with them.’
The source added: ‘I want to be clear here. These lads were not the only ones who have done things of this nature.
‘It’s becoming a growing social media trend and it’s been a nightmare for gardaí to police because they are often ordered to stand down from pursuits because of the danger that chasing these guys could put the public in.
‘It’s a no-win situation for Gardaí here and now you have four innocent people who have been injured because of this recklessness.’
