NI man (20) appears in court charged over crash that killed NI mother and son and a young footballer

Keith Lennon appeared before Dundalk District Court charged with dangerous driving, causing the death of three people and failing to stay at the scene of a crash and report it.

Mr Lennon, a 20-year-old from Dromantine in Co Armagh, was refused bail by the judge based on the seriousness of the charges, the nature and strength of the evidence and his flight risk as he does not live in the Republic where the crash happened.

Wearing a grey hoodie and dark jeans, Mr Lennon did not speak during the hearing on Monday morning.

The three people who died have been named locally as Mary Faxton, who was in her 80s, and her son Kevin Faxton, who was in his 50s, and Bryan Magill, who was in his 20s.

The two older victims were both occupants in one of the cars involved in the collision on the N1 at Carrickcarnan at about 2.15am on Saturday.

The younger man was travelling in the other car. Another man in his 20s, who sustained non-life threatening injuries in the crash, was also in that car.

Mr Magill was from Newry, while the Faxtons were from the nearby Co Armagh village of Bessbrook.

The crash was one of a series of fatal incidents on Ireland’s roads over the weekend.

Four other people died.

A 16-year-old girl was killed after the car she was travelling in struck a wall in Oughterard, Co Galway, in the early hours of Sunday.

In Co Monaghan, a male pedestrian aged in his 20s suffered fatal injuries when he was struck by a lorry on the N54 between Monaghan and Clones on Saturday morning.

On Friday night, a man and a woman in their 60s died in a crash involving a car and a jeep on the N55 in Ballinagh, Co Cavan.