A man convicted last month of causing the death of an 18-year old by careless driving filed an insurance claim against the dead boy’s parents, it has been revealed.
Father of three Eamon Lynch was driving drunk at 165kph with no licence, insurance, valid NCT, or tax on his car when he struck teenager Shane Patton’s car in Co Donegal, Ireland in 2012.
Lynch, who has almost 500 previous convictions including 280 for traffic offences and 50 for burglary, tried to begin an insurance claim against the Patton family’s insurance company 123.ie in relation to the crash, a report from The Irish Times said yesterday.
Shane Patton’s mother, Julie Patton, described the moment she received a letter from Lynch putting blame on her son for the fatal crash.
“I initially opened the letter and realised it was from Eamonn Lynch and I just gave it to my husband Martin who took it to our solicitor,” she said of receiving the claim in 2014.
“As I understood it, he was claiming off our insurance company and was claiming that the crash was in some way Shane’s fault because he came out of a side-road,” she explained.
“But if he hadn’t have been travelling at twice the speed limit then this might never have happened and Shane might still be here.”
At the time of the accident, Shane Patton was a named driver on his mother’s car insurance policy.
Mrs Patton said she does not know if the claim is still being processed after Lynch last month pleaded guilty to careless driving causing Shane Patton’s death on July 12th, 2012.
She added that she had informed her insurance company of the claim against her, and did not know if her premium had been affected by the events.
“I’m not sure if that affected my insurance but it did go up. Perhaps we were just too honest,” she said.
