Kurdish couple and eight-month-old baby killed in Galway collision named
The couple and child who died in the collision on the M6 motorway in Galway on Thursday have been named as Karzan Sabah, his wife Shahen Oasm and their eight-month-old baby girl Lena.
The Kurdish family died last week after a driver entered the motorway on the wrong side and crashed head-on into the their car.
They were pronounced dead at the scene along with the man who was driving on the wrong side of the road.
Mr Sabah was 36 years old and came from the city of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. He studied agriculture at university and moved to Plymouth in 2011 to study for a Masters before moving on to Galway in 2017 to complete his PhD in agriculture at NUIG.
Shahen Oasm (31), was a qualified engineer also from Erbil who moved to Ireland in 2017 with her husband.
Mr Sabah had recently been offered a job as a lecturer in Carlow and was driving back from Carlow on the day of the collision after viewing a house the family were hoping to rent.
“He was a real family man and adored his wife Shahen and their little baby Lena,” founders of Kurdish Irish Society in Dublin Zhyan Sharif and Philip Phelan told The Irish Times. “They loved Galway and all of its inhabitants, and the amount of messages on social media is a flowing tribute to this.
Passion
“Karzan had a great connection with the Kurdish families in the Galway area and maintained his passion for being Kurdish. He was trilingual and he spoke Kurdish, English and Arabic, he also had a love for reading and music and to travel.”
Ms Sharif and Mr Phelan confirmed the repatriation of the family’s remains to Erbil in Iraq was “being dealt with at the moment”.
Hiwa Wahab, founder of the Kurdish Art Nergz Group, said the Irish Kurdish community was “devastated” by the news of the family’s deaths.
“Everyone is so sad, especially because there was a woman and child involved too,” said Mr Wahab who runs the group representing more than 4,000 Kurds living around Ireland. “Everyone I talk to is devastated, it feels like a funeral in every house.”
The Kurdish Art Nergz group held a small memorial for the family at the site of the collision on Saturday where between 30 and 40 people laid flowers by the side of the road.
Thursday night’s crash, which also involved a third vehicle, occurred at about 7.40pm on the M6 motorway at Poolboy, Ballinasloe.
The driver of the third car involved was the sole occupant of that vehicle, and while the person was taken to hospital for treatment, their injuries were not life-threatening.
Such was the impact of the two vehicles crashing head-on that gardaí believe debris from those cars shot over the scene and caused the driver of the third vehicle to crash.
Gardaí have appealed for witnesses to come forward following the crash, especially any drivers with dashcam footage filmed in the area just before the collision.
The deaths of the family and the driver who crashed into them brought to six the number of road fatalities in the Republic in 24 hours. There have been a total of 92 people killed on the country’s roads so far this year, three more than during the same period last year.
