THE grandparents of a 14-year-old boy killed in a car crash alongside his mum have buried him with a light because he was afraid of the dark.

Little Joey Kelly Cahill, from Ballygar, Co Galway, wanted to be a jockey, a vet or a doctor when he grew up.

But the youngster’s life was cut tragically short when the car he was travelling in with his mum Tina hit a tree on July 24 last year. The pair were killed instantly.

The fatal accident was yet another blow for the Kelly family, who were already reeling from previous tragedies. Tina’s sister Carol passed away in December 2014 after an asthma attack.

And Joey’s dad, point-to-point jockey Joseph Cahill, died in a car accident in 2006 aged just 29.

Tina and Joey were two of 188 people who lost their lives on the roads in Ireland in 2016.

Each life lost resulted in devastation for their family, friends and communities, as a new RTE documentary explores.

After The Crash goes behind the statistics and delves into the stories of those left behind.

It includes powerful testimony from parents, siblings, grandparents, children and grandchildren on the enormous impact of each and every loss of life.

Joey’s grandparents Tom and Margaret describe the emptiness of losing both their daughter and their grandson in the same instant.

Tom said: “Joey will never be forgotten here or Tina.

“Tina was a real gorgeous girl, she was fierce good-hearted.

“She was only minutes from her own house. Joey loved horses, he loved all animals. He had two homes, his own home and here with us, Margaret and I, his granny and grandad.

“All his spare time he spent here with us, most of it anyway.

“He was a bubbly young fella, full of life. He’d come to sales. He’d love to lead ponies and horses for other people, which he did on several occasions, and earned some money for himself.

“He was what you call a little dealer, a little horse dealer in his own right. If he went to the shop to pick a few bars he’d say to the shop attendant, ‘Give me five for the price of four’, he’d try and knock a wee bit off the price.”

In the documentary the grieving grandparents struggled to regain their composure when reading out a letter Joey wrote in school in which he described his life and the dreams of the possible careers he wanted when he grew up.

Tom said: “He had great imagination, he had high hopes.”

On July 27, Joey and Tina were buried together in the family plot, and personal items were placed in with them.

Margaret explained: “His father had bought him a Tweety Bird toy and he had that for years so I put it in the coffin with him. And his light was buried with him.

“He loved the light in his room. He was afraid of the dark.”

Tom told how going into the empty house where Joey and Tina once lived is heartbreaking. He said: “The lot of them wiped out, the house is there now closed up. I keep a light on it and fires in it.

“You find a big emptiness when you walk into the house.

“You’d be expecting Joey to come down the hall.

“It’s hard to go into the house.” The heartbreaking programme also tells the story of the sad death of musician Colin Vearncombe.

The 53-year-old had a worldwide hit with the song Wonderful Life in the 1980s under the name Black.

He lived in Schull, Co Cork, with his wife Camilla and three sons Max, Marius and Milan and was excited to become a grandfather. Colin was on his way to Cork Airport when his car skidded on black ice on January 10.

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He was less than a minute from the airport when he lost control of the vehicle. He died in hospital 16 days later.

Son Marius told how he listens to his dad’s songs a lot, saying: “Over the past year, almost every night before I go to bed. In a Heartbeat and Fly Up To The Moon, those would be my two favourites.”

And he recalled the last time he saw his dad: “I was after a night out.

“I came back at five o’clock in the morning or something, and got into bed. And he comes into the room and he knows I was out the night before and dying and jumps on the bed and shakes me and says, ‘I’ll see you later, I’m off now, I’ll see you later’. And he’s off out the door.”

AFTER the Crash airs on RTE One tonight at 9.35pm

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