🚨 Five Teenagers In Balaclavas Died In A Horror Wrong-Way Crash — But What Police Discovered About Their Final Hours Is Even More Chilling
Five teenagers wearing balaclavas roared the wrong way down a dark motorway in the early hours of Sunday, their BMW hurtling toward oncoming headlights until it smashed head-on into a family car. The impact killed all five boys instantly. The family they hit — three sisters and a seven-year-old boy on their way to the airport for a wedding — were left fighting for their lives.
Joey Carthy was just 15. Alex McCarthy, 17, was his cousin Jeremy O’Brien’s relative. Jack Kennedy, 17, and Kamil Pustkowski, 17, filled the other seats. Jeremy himself was 18. They had been known to gardaí for previous car thefts, hit-and-runs, and trying the doors of unlocked vehicles in the Carlow-Kildare area. Some of them had written “Lucky Dip” into their social media profiles. Police later said they had no formal ties to the main gang, but they were clearly copying the style.
The crash happened around 3am on the M9 northbound near Junction 3 at Moone in County Kildare. The BMW, a 2007 model bought for about €1,100 in cash just days earlier by an associate, had already been driven the wrong way on the motorway more than once that night. Gardaí had received reports of masked youths attempting break-ins at houses and cars in Athy hours earlier. Doorbell cameras and CCTV captured the group. A patrol car spotted the BMW. It sped off. Officers were ordered not to chase it onto the motorway — the risk of causing more collisions was too high. They planned to wait at the next junction with a stinger device to puncture the tyres. The car never made it that far.
Alma and Niamh Kinsella, both in their 30s, sat in the front of the Hyundai. Their younger sister Ellie Hendricken was in the back with her seven-year-old nephew. They were heading to Dublin Airport to fly to a family wedding in the UK. Two of the women remain in critical condition. The boy and the third sister are in a serious but stable state. A fundraiser for them quickly passed €400,000.
This was not a random accident. It was the bloody end of a night of thrill-seeking that has become a pattern among certain groups of Irish teenagers. The so-called Lucky Dip crew — a name the media gave them because they pick targets at random like drawing from a hat — has been running a campaign of burglaries, car thefts and joyrides across parts of Ireland. They are not a tightly organised syndicate selling cars for parts. Most are young, some as young as 14, stealing vehicles for the rush of driving them at speed, posting videos of police chases and weaving through traffic. Older Japanese imports without immobilisers are favourite targets. In one three-month stretch last year they were linked to around 300 incidents.
The five boys who died had been posting clips of themselves being pursued, music blasting, one video captioned simply “wrong way.” TikTok later removed similar content. The pattern is familiar: steal a car, drive it like a weapon, film it, upload it, collect likes. Two of the dead teens had already been questioned over a hit-and-run in Carlow the previous month.
Retired Scotland Yard detective Mick Neville, who once headed forensic imaging at the Met and now runs Super Recognisers International, has been watching the phenomenon with growing alarm. He had already been in contact with Irish police before this crash. “Social media is such that people in England will think ‘that’s a good idea, we’ll have a go at that as well’,” he said. “It’s a contagion.” He has no doubt copycats in Britain are already thinking about it.
The balaclavas are meant to hide identities. The Bally Boys, as some call themselves, believe the masks make them unidentifiable. Neville disagrees. Super recognisers are trained to pick out people from the smallest details — the shape of the eyes, a distinctive item of clothing, the way someone sits in a car. Once you have a name you can match DNA, check phones, track movements. Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Thames Valley police already use the technique. German forces do too. Social media, he points out, is a double-edged sword. Every video a joyrider posts is potential evidence. “If you’re going to be mug enough to put yourself on social media, then the police can get you.”
The problem for police is the danger of the chase itself. A car going the wrong way on a motorway cannot be safely pursued. Closing the road and using stingers is the only realistic option, but that takes time and coordination. Irish gardaí have not had dedicated pursuit training; that is now being introduced. Britain’s roads already see regular illegal racing and 100mph videos. Adding organised, balaclava-wearing teenage gangs who treat motorways like playgrounds would make the problem far worse.
The five boys who died were not the first to take this path and they will not be the last unless the cycle is broken quickly. Their families are burying them this week. The Kinsella family is still in hospital. Emergency crews who attended the scene have been told they will need counselling for years. The wreckage was so badly crushed that the fifth body was only found when the BMW was moved.
Lucky Dip is not a sophisticated crime syndicate. It is a social-media-fuelled craze of bored, reckless teenagers who have discovered that stealing a car and driving it the wrong way down a motorway gets attention. The crash in Kildare showed exactly where that attention leads. Five young lives ended in a single second of impact. Four more people, including a child, are fighting to recover. And across the Irish Sea, officers are being told they need to get ready for the same videos, the same balaclavas, and the same deadly games to appear on British streets.
