Mayor’s sympathy for road victim

A car she was in collided with a lorry on the main A26 road close to Dunloy Crossroads after 9am on Thursday.

Emergency services were called to the scene where crews found Julia Kerr - who was originally from Scotland - seriously injured inside her badly damaged car and the lorry at the bottom of an embankment.

The driver of the lorry is believed to have escaped serious injury.

The Fire and Rescue Service tried to rescue Ms Kerr from the car.

District commander for the area, Charlie McAuley, said a team of firefighters worked to free the woman while paramedics treated her.

“Unfortunately during the course of when we were doing that the doctor confirmed that the lady had died at the scene,” he said.

“We waited until we were given police clearance to cut the car apart to release her, and the car was removed from the scene.”

He said the car had been “very seriously damaged” in the accident, and said it had been a “very traumatic” incident for the emergency services to witness.

“The lorry went off the road and down an embankment and the car was so severely damaged it would be hard to tell what direction it was travelling in,” he added.

Ms Kerr’s death took the number of people who had died on Northern Ireland’s roads to 14 - over double the number from the same time last year.

It has now emerged that the deceased had been arrested for a motoring offence the evening before she died.

The circumstances surrounding the mother of one’s death are to be investigated by the Police Ombudsman after it emerged she left Ballymoney police station minutes before the fatal accident.

Ballymoney mayor Bill Kennedy, who lives in Ballybogey, said the villagers were numbed at the death of such a young woman.