MY brother and I recently attended the trial of Niall McAuliffe, the driver of the lorry that killed my parents on Fish Hill in Broadway on September 9, 1997.

This was a culmination of nearly three years hard work by the West Mercia police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The case was complicated by the fact that both the lorry driver and the company that owned the lorry were Southern Irish. It may surprise your readers to learn that, under European law, the company director was not obliged to respond to a summons from an English court and the Irish Justice Department wrote on the summons to this effect.

This was only one of many difficulties that resulted in three long years of investigations and adjourned court hearings. The company director, Liam Tarrant of Kilgore Ltd, trading as Tarrant Transport, based in Co Cork, was finally tried in his absence on September 20, 1999, followed by an appeal on February 24, 2000, which was eventually withdrawn.

The final amount Mr Tarrant was fined was for purely motoring offences relating mainly to defective brakes and the lack of a test certificate.

This amounted to £5,310 plus costs - not much for two lives. Mr McAuliffe was acquitted.

We are, however, as a family indebted to the hard work and perseverance of the West Mercia police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

VERONICA MAEERS,

Grimsby,

Lincolnshire.