Gardai are today hoping to speak to the driver of a car that plunged into a harbour in Co Wicklow killing the male passenger.
It appears the woman driving managed to free herself and made her own way from the waters of Arklow Harbour.
Informed Garda sources said the woman, a Polish national in her 20s, was driving the vehicle at the time and they are hopeful she will be able to assist the investigation of the circumstances in which the car entered the water killing the victim.
“She has been in medical treatment so when she is well enough to be interviewed we will see at that stage how this investigation is going to go,” said one source.
The woman driving the car was named locally as Marta Herda with an address at Parcnasilla Moclew Road, Tinahask, Arklow.
She was undergoing medical treatment last night at Loughlinstown Hospital, south Dublin. She is not believed to have any serious injuries.
The dead man was named locally as Csaba Orsos, a Hungarian national in his 30s with an address at Brookview Court, Arklow.
The Irish Times understands they knew each other and worked with each other waiting tables at a hotel in the region.
Just before 3pm yesterday the wreckage of Ms Herda’s badly damaged gold Volkswagen Passat was taken from the water at Arklow Harbour.
At around the same time Mr Orsos’s remains were discovered at a beach about two miles south of the town. It appears his body ended up in the waters in the harbour and was carried on the tide to the spot where it was found. The incident began shortly after 6am when Ms Herda alerted a nearby security guard that she had crashed into the water.
She is believed to have little English, though her housemate was contacted and came to the quayside and interpreted for her. When gardai arrived on the scene Ms Herda was said to be “frantic” and was soaking wet having apparently just been in the water.
When she relayed what had happened to gardai who arrived at the scene, the area was sealed off and the operation to recover the car and Mr Orsos’s body was begun.
Members of the garda sub aqua unit were hampered by choppy conditions at the scene, where the River Avoca meets the sea. At lunchtime a crane arrived and divers helped attach chains to the car which emerged from the sea upside down and badly damaged with airbags deployed inside.
It has been taken away for examination by the Garda as part of their investigations.
A large number of people known to Mr Orsos and Ms Herda gathered on the quays at the harbour throughout yesterday while onlookers also gathered as the recovery of the car and the Garda and Coast Guard search for the dead man’s remains were still underway in the harbour.
The brother of the deceased, encircled by friends, had been visibly distraught in the moments building up to its recovery. Later it emerged that a body had been found at Clogga Beach about two miles south of the scene of the accident and the search operation was called off.
