Grieving Parents Recall Tragic Loss of Daughter Kiea McCann and Her Best Friend Dlava Mohamed

 In a deeply moving interview aired on RTÉ’s Prime Time, the parents of 17-year-old Kiea McCann shared harrowing details of the night their daughter and her best friend, 16-year-old Dlava Mohamed, lost their lives in a car crash en route to their school debs. The incident occurred on July 31, 2023, in Legnakelly, Co. Monaghan, when the vehicle—driven by Anthony McGinn—collided with a tree after ignoring pleas from the girls to slow down.

Kiea’s parents, Teresa and Frankie McCann, recounted the joy and excitement in their home on the morning of the debs. “Getting ready that morning, me and Kiea—of course, she was above in the bedroom, and I’m downstairs, waiting for her and we’re texting each other, back and forward. I said, ‘Come on, time to get the makeup done,’” Teresa recalled. “They were so excited about it,” Frankie added, reflecting on the happiness that preceded the tragedy.

But that evening, joy gave way to devastation. Frankie recounted the moment they arrived at the crash site. “We got there, and we seen the car had hit the tree and had spun around,” he told Prime Time. “So I said to Teresa, ‘You hold back.’ And I jumped the fence… ‘You won't want to come down here for a minute,’ I said. ‘I'll check is the kids all right.’”

Climbing through the window of the wrecked vehicle, Frankie found the driver holding his daughter. “Anthony McGinn had a hold of my daughter like that there, and he says to me, ‘Frankie, Kiea, Frankie, Kiea,’ and I never spoke to him, so I didn't, and I started doing compressions on her.”

The moments that followed were agonizing. “We were waiting for the fire brigades and ambulances—it just seemed like an eternity,” he said. “Eventually, when they came, I helped to cut the doors off and cut the girls down… It was just a rush job from jumping from my own daughter to Dlava. Just trying basically to save one to get to the other.”

Frankie described how the girls were eventually placed side by side. “When they were in the car, they were holding hands when they were gone, and we knew they were gone instantly. Then you'd turn around, you'd see the rest of your kids stand on the road, and them screaming and panicking.”

In an act of love and faith, Frankie gave the girls their last rites himself. “There's nobody else there to do it,” he said. “If anything, you kind of hope, if there is something after life, they would know that you were with them. You know, they'd know that they were loved. Because my daughter knew she was loved.”

The emotional toll on the McCann family has been compounded by what they perceive as an inadequate sentence handed to the driver. Frankie was candid in his criticism: “To believe that the man that was asked to stop and refused, in my eyes and in the mother's eyes, what we seen on the night—if the DPP or the judge or somebody had to go through all that trauma that we went through and seen it, it would be a different story.”

He continued: “You just can't live life like that, and then to go into a court and to hear he gets seven years. Why not turn around and give five years for my daughter? Give five years for the Dlava, two years for Avin. That's 12 years that a judge could have given, consecutive years. He could have given that—not turn around and say, will it? He's getting three meals a day. He's getting visits. Me and her want to visit our daughter—it’s a graveyard. Speak to a stone.”

Teresa echoed the sentiment, stating that McGinn had been entrusted with the girls’ safety. “To me, it's not a fair sentence,” she said. “At the end of the day, he knew what he was at when he got into that car. He knew he was meant to bring them kids to their debs. He knew he was meant to drive them safe. We trusted that.”

The tragic loss of Kiea and Dlava has left an indelible mark not only on their families, but on the wider community—a painful reminder of how one reckless act can change countless lives forever.