Adam O’Toole: Three years of torment for family

Jul 22 2010 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A VITAL attribute in any journalist’s armoury is the ability to inure yourself to tragedy.

Fail to detach yourself from the horrors occasionally thrown at you and the job becomes virtually impossible to do.

Once in a while, however, a story comes along that pierces this shell – that exerts an emotional pull that is difficult to ignore.

The death of Adam O’Toole in a hit-and-run incident in March 2007 was, for me, one such story.

I started at the Examiner less than a fortnight after Adam died.

A few days later I was asked to attend his funeral at St David’s Church in Holmbridge.

It was clear from the huge turn-out that he was an immensely popular, talented and ambitious young man.

His life had ended just as it should have been beginning. It may seem a strange thing to say, but it was a privilege to have been at that service.

Over the next few months I got to know Adam’s mother, Beverley, and his girlfriend, Laura. Adam had called them his queen and princess.

They, as well as Adam’s father, John, were having to cope, not just with the tragic loss of a loved one, but with the agony of uncertainty about who had been responsible.

It is impossible for anyone who has not been through a similar experience to know what that must be like.

As time passed, and repeated appeals failed to yield any new leads, hope of a breakthrough all but disappeared.

Brett Kingsley’s arrest in February, therefore, came completely out of the blue.

He immediately admitted being behind the wheel and lying about the incident for the last three years.

For that he should get a small degree of credit. But the credit ends there.

At court yesterday, Kingsley’s barrister Christopher Tehrani, attempted to evoke the judge’s sympathy by claiming his client had suffered greatly as a result of “having to keep this terrible secret to himself.”

The implication that Kingsley was under an obligation to keep quiet was offensive.