'I killed my friend’- social media star Steve Timothy tells of tragic road accident that left him paralysed

Online personality and social media star Steve Timothy (aka Farmer Michael) has said that young people need to understand that road traffic accidents do, and can happen.

Mr Timothy was a guest speaker at the AXA Roadsafety Roadshow in Castlebar yesterday, where he shared the story of the tragic road traffic accident that left him paralysed and took the life of his friend.

Speaking to local media, the Galway man explained that he was invited to the roadshow to share ‘the other point of view’ in road accidents.

“I was invited up to speak and tell my story, and my story is from the other point of view. Being the drink driver, I suppose you want to get that out to as many people as possible and if you change one person's actions, then it's worth it,” he said.

The comic was involved in a crash in the Mervue area of Galway in 2005 in which he crashed his motorbike while drunk, killing his friend, John Laffey.

He told the audience of 1,600 Transition Year students at the event, that he went out to ‘celebrate’ finishing his exams.

He said: “I stupidly got on my motorbike, went into town to get a drink, arrived home, went to bed, woke up the next morning, life was brilliant - I’d love to stand here today and tell you that’s what f****** happened, but unfortunately it wasn’t.”

Mr Timothy explained that he met his friend at the Spanish Arch in Galway, where he parked up his bike with ‘no intention of getting on’, but with ‘stupidity and drunkenness’ he and his friend ‘went for a drive’.

“Crashed; lost control on the bend, we went through a warning sign and a telegraph pole and landed 40 to 60 feet away from where we crashed,” he said.

Following the accident, Mr Timothy had lost movement from his upper chest down and was undergoing rehabilitation treatment at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire.  

It was there, a week and a half later, he was told of his friend's passing.

_{Mr Timothy speaking at the roadshow (Pic: Michael McLaughlin)}

“[My father] said ‘I have something to tell you’ and I said ‘John’s dead’, he asked how did I know, and I said ‘I just know by the way you’re talking’,

“I was just hit with the news that John was dead, and to me, I had killed my friend; I destroyed my own life and killed him, and destroyed his family's life.

“It’s strange when you’re paralysed in hospital because the one option that people always have is taking your own life and killing yourself, but if you’re paralysed, you’re stolen of even that option,” he said.

He shared that he became aggressive with nursing staff and did not care for his own recovery.

Mr Timothy said he decided he had three options: one, to end his life; two, to slowly ‘drink [himself] to death’, or three, to get out, be public about it, and be brutally honest about what happened.

“I chose the third, and that’s why I’m here today, so please listen,” he said to the attentive students in the audience.

Speaking after the event to local media, he said the show was ‘very beneficial and very moving; very emotional’.

The message of the roadshow particularly focused on the 17-25 year olds, who represent around 20 percent of road deaths, despite making up just 12 percent of the population.

The event shared the message ‘slow down boys’, after statistics show young men make up 78 percent of road fatalities in the age category.

Mr Timothy said his audience would be in ‘that age group’ and said ‘we know it's that age group that are primarily responsible’.

He added: “You can only do your best, and you try your best to reach them, but if we knew how to get to them, we'd have the winning lotto ticket, but we don't, unfortunately.”

The roadshow attacked the attitude of many young people, who think ‘that will never happen to me’, to which Mr Timothy shared the message: “It will, it can, and it happened to me and I killed my friend, and I'm in a wheelchair. So, it does happen and can happen.”