Heartbroken Mum of D.e.a.d Teen Apologises to Family Fighting for Life After Wrong-Way Motorway Horror That K.i.l.l.e.d Five Boys
In the quiet of a church in Athy, County Kildare, a mother’s voice broke the silence with words that cut deeper than any eulogy. At the funeral of her 17-year-old son Jack Kennedy, one of five teenagers killed in a catastrophic wrong-way crash on the M9 motorway, Sarah Kennedy turned her grief outward. She offered her deepest apologies to the innocent family still fighting for survival in hospital after the collision caused by the car her son was travelling in.
The tragedy unfolded in the early hours of Sunday, 16 August 2026. Shortly after 3 a.m., a black BMW carrying five teenage boys—Joey Carthy, 15, from Athy; Alex McCarthy, 16 or 17, from Carlow; Jack Kennedy, 17, from Athy; Jeremy O’Brien, 18, from Carlow; and Kamil Pustkowski, 17, from Limerick—sped the wrong direction along the M9 near Moone, Co Kildare. The vehicle, believed to have been stolen and occupied by youths wearing balaclavas or masks, had already travelled against the flow of traffic at least twice that night. Gardaí had earlier disengaged from any pursuit. The BMW struck a Hyundai head-on at high speed. All five teenagers died at the scene.
Inside the Hyundai were three sisters—Alma and Niamh Kinsella, both in their 30s, and Ella Hendricken, in her 20s—along with Alma’s seven-year-old son. The family from the Carlow area was heading to Dublin Airport for a flight to a family wedding in the UK. The impact left the women and child with critical and serious injuries. They remain in hospital more than a week later.
At Jack Kennedy’s funeral Mass on 25 August, his mother first expressed condolences to the other four grieving families. Then she addressed the injured: the families of those still recovering were in their thoughts and prayers. She prayed for their full recovery and repeated that they were sorry. The moment captured the unbearable weight of a parent who has lost a child while acknowledging the pain inflicted on others who never chose to be involved.
Similar sentiments had already been voiced by another mother. Margaret Berry, mother of Jeremy O’Brien, spoke ahead of her son’s funeral of her wish that he had never entered the car that night. She said she was not proud of what happened, did not condone it, and would apologise to the injured family if she could. She continues to pray for their healing and hopes one day they might find some form of forgiveness.
The crash has left five families sentenced to lifelong grief and another family facing an uncertain medical battle. Investigations continue into the circumstances, including the backgrounds of the teenagers and the decision to drive against traffic—behaviour some officials have linked to a wider pattern of dangerous driving sometimes performed for online attention. Police maintained a visible presence at the funerals amid public anger and concern.
Priests at the services acknowledged the wrongness of the boys’ actions while urging communities not to let the tragedy define the young lives entirely, and calling for an end to the cycle of reckless behaviour that endangers everyone on the roads. Five young lives ended in an instant. Four others hang in the balance. And a mother’s public apology at her son’s funeral stands as a raw reminder of the human cost that no investigation can fully measure.
