A Derry businessman has spoken of the "absolute carnage" he witnessed as one of the first on the scene of a border road crash in which a man and woman were killed.
Peter Casey, who appears on the RTE programme Dragon's Den, said he arrived seconds after the two-car collision on the main Derry to Letterkenny road.
A 32-year-old man from Co Derry and a 34-year-old woman from north Donegal were confirmed dead following the crash at around 2.30pm yesterday.
A third man was taken to Derry’s Altnagelvin hospital where he was believed to be in a serious condition.
The accident happened on the Letterkenny side of Newtowncunningham, close to the Derry border.
It is understood the dead woman – thought to have been living in the Burt area of Inishowen but originally from Co Cavan – was travelling alone in a Skoda car towards Letterkenny.
The two men were travelling together in a Honda Civic towards Derry.
Mr Casey said: “It is the most horrendous scene I’ve ever seen. The car with the two men passed me on the road and seconds later I turned the bend and it was absolute carnage.
“It appeared to be a head-on collision. I used my car to block the road and divert traffic. I could see immediately that one of the men appeared to be dead; one of the cars was cut in two with the two parts about 100 yards apart.”
Mr Casey, founder of global recruitment firm Claddagh Resources, said a truck driver who arrived at the same time immediately phoned an ambulance and gardai.
“After a while, all I could think of doing was calling my office and telling them to phone the local priest to get him out there; it was shocking,” he said.
Mr Casey said the weather was particularly bad at the time of the collision, which occurred on a stretch of road which has witnessed other fatalities in the past.
In October 2008, a teenage boy was killed in a two-vehicle collision while in May 2009, friends Gary McLaughlin and Darren Downey died on the same N13 road a short distance away.
The businessman said he remained for approximately 30 minutes until he had spoken to gardai.
The road remained closed throughout the afternoon and evening.
The crash came a day after three people were injured - one critically - in a three-car collision on the A21 Bangor to Newtownards dual carriageway in Co Down.
It happened near the Green Road junction, at 7.40pm on Thursday.
Paramedics treated three people at the scene for leg, abdominal and chest injuries
A man is his thirties remained in a critical condition in the Royal Victoria Hospital last night.
Two women were also in the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, where one was in a serious condition and the other was stable.
