Civilian John Sullivan or O’Sullivan

Civilian John Sullivan or O’Sullivan of Ballyhilow of Ballihilow [sic] near Leap (Leap)

Date of incident: 19 Dec. 1922

Sources: SS, 23 Dec. 1922; Keane (2017), 342, 421.

Note: The young boy John Sullivan of Ballyhilow [sic] was struck and fatally injured by a military motor car at Leap on Tuesday, 19 December 1922. At the military inquiry held in Skibbereen on Friday, 22 December, Mary Agnes Regan, a National Teacher at Ballihilow [sic] testified: ‘I know the deceasesd child; he was under my charge in school. I was standing on the steps of the school on the day in question. I saw the motor car pass the school. The motor car passed the school slowly. I did not see anything of the child until I saw him lying flat on the ground.’ Cornelius Sullivan also testified: ‘I am the father of the deceased child. I saw him going to school in the morning about 10 o’clock. When next I saw him, he was inside in my own house and was then dying. He lived for about a quarter of an hour.’ The attending doctor T. J. O’Meara stated that the boy had died of a ‘hemorrhage on the brain’. The ‘concussion of the blow caused rupture of a blood vessel within the skull, and bleeding from the blood vessel caused death’. See SS, 23 Dec. 1922.

Captain Timothy O’Sullivan, who was apparently the driver of the motor car, explained to the court of inquiry that when he and Brigadier McCarthy ‘were within about 5 yards of the school, a little boy ran out the gate whom I afterwards recognised was the deceased. He was looking in the direction of his own house. He seemed to hear no noise even though we were within five yards of him. He gave a right turn and ran down the road in the direction of his own house at the right of the motor car. He ran for about fifteen yards, about five or six yards in front of the motor car at the right hand side. For that 15 yards the engine was making a lot of noise, and four of us were continually roaring at him to clear out of ther road, until he seemed to get a notion to cross to the left of the road. We in the car had no notion he was about to cross to the left. He made about two or three paces to cross when the right mud guard hit him in the head. He fell out about a pace to the right of the car. . . . We immediately came out [of the car] and found a man with his coat off having picked up the child. We carried the child into a house a few yards away and kept him there for about ten minutes, and then carried him down to his own house about twenty yards further on.’ The court of inquiry exonerated ‘the driver from all blame’. The court did strongly recommend ‘this case to the consideration of the military authorities’. See SS, 23 Dec. 1922.