Liam was sports-mad and had just finished his second year of university when he died.
Sports-mad Liam O’Connor, a student at the University of Newcastle, had a promising future ahead of him. A keen and talented athlete and rugby player, he was selected to play for Lancashire County and had played for professional rugby club Sale Sharks’ junior academy.
It was Friday 9 June 2023, and Liam was celebrating having finished his second year at university. He was looking forward to a summer of freedom before heading to America to study during his third year.
That day, Liam’s parents, Joan and Mike, had driven up to Newcastle from the family home in Manchester. They were staying in a hotel nearby and planned to pick Liam up the next day and bring him home for the summer.
But in the early hours of Saturday morning, Joan’s phone rang. On the other end was a police officer, and in that moment the family’s world began crashing down around them.
The officer told the couple their son had been badly injured in a collision. A patrol car was sent to collect them and take them to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, where Liam was being treated.
Mike recalls the whirlwind of events that unfolded. “They took us in the police car with flashing blue lights, so we knew it was clearly very serious,” he says. “We got to the hospital and were taken into the relatives’ room in the intensive care unit. From the information we were given by the intensive care team, we knew that Liam’s injuries were extremely serious and that the outcome was likely to be poor.”
They learned that at around 1 o’clock that morning, Liam was walking home after a night out. Five minutes away from where he was living, he stepped onto a pedestrian crossing and was hit by a taxi. His extensive injuries included a severe brain injury and that afternoon, Liam died with his parents and his elder siblings, Kathleen and Sean, by his bedside.
“Suddenly we were catapulted into this nightmare. We’d been with him [when he died], but having to walk away and leave him in the hospital was extremely difficult. It was heartbreaking,” Joan says. “The next day, we had to collect his belongings from his flat, and there were lots of other parents there picking their kids up. It was a glorious day and it was at complete odds with how we felt. It was like a really bad dream.”
A few weeks after Liam died, a phone call to Brake led to a small glimmer of hope amid the desperation. “I spoke to Becky, who triaged us, and she was absolutely lovely,” Joan says. “I remember the language she used; she talked about the impact of traumatic bereavement, and we felt that she understood what we were going through.”
Joan was assigned a caseworker, Don, who she says helped her to better understand her grief and provided comfort. “Don was amazing from the word ‘go’. He was very calm, very kind, and very knowledgeable. He made me see how what I was feeling was normal, and that maybe it wasn’t always going to be quite as raw and quite as painful.”
Liam is very much at the forefront of our minds. We miss him terribly, but we were very lucky to have him
Joan and Mike surround themselves with reminders of their son.
Don also helped the family to unravel some of the complex processes that take place after a road death, like the police investigation, dealing with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and what turned out to be a very distressing inquest.
The taxi driver admitted he had been undertaking another vehicle at the time of the crash and hadn’t seen Liam step onto the pedestrian crossing. Although the police believed there was a case to prosecute the driver for causing death by careless driving, the CPS ruled that there was insufficient evidence to proceed.
“We felt re-traumatised after the inquest. We had a few days of really deep grief and trauma – it was like going back two years to when it happened,” Joan says.
“You feel like your heart has been ripped out of you and it will never get better. Don was able to help me put into words what I was feeling but couldn’t articulate. He said that the wound won’t ever go away, but gradually you will heal around it. It made sense and gave me a bit of hope in the middle of all this awful darkness.”
Liam was a talented rugby player and keen athlete. His friends and family held a rugby match in his memory.
The family has also found some small comfort in the ways Liam’s friends, relatives and teammates have chosen to pay tribute to him, while raising money for Brake at the same time. With donations, charity football and rugby matches, runs and marathons, quizzes and other events, they have raised in the region of £30,000.
“It is so nice to know Liam is being remembered, but it’s tinged with so much sadness,” Mike says. “There was a big rugby match last year, and it was such a lovely occasion. Liam would have loved to have been there playing alongside his teammates.”
At home, Joan and Mike surround themselves with reminders of their son – framed rugby shirts, photos and a garden bench with Liam’s name engraved on a plaque among them. “Liam is very much at the forefront of our minds,” Joan comments. “We miss him terribly, but we were very lucky to have him.”