Emergency services at '˜horror crash' outside Cookstown

Mid Ulster Policing and Community Safety Partnership, along with local NPT officers in Cookstown, are behind the event.

In recent years the area has suffered countless number of serious accidents with dozens of lives lost.

It was revealed that Mid Ulster suffered the most road deaths in Northern Ireland during 2015 - with nine fatalities.

During the same period the Fire and Rescue Service reported attending over a third more incidents in its Cookstown District - up from 48 in 2014 to 67 in 2015.

Emergency Services will also be in attendance tonight to show what they have to do at the scene of a serious crash.

Colm Mullen, from the Rock, is urging people to attend the event to see for themselves what confronts emergency services.

Mr Mullen, who advocated a ‘Don’t Risk It Poster’ campaign last year to dissuade motorists from driving home after they have been out drinking.

He said the event at Rock was open to everyone.

Local PSNI Sergeant JP McCartan said: “One of the hardest parts of the job for Emergency Services personnel is breaking the news of the death or injury of a loved one to relatives and it is especially heart breaking when that news is of a young person whose whole life lay ahead of them.

“Every parent’s nightmare is to hear that

knock on the door and be told that their child has been involved in a road traffic collision.

“Shocking though it was, this reconstruction aims to help our young people understand the life changing consequences that a road traffic collision can have for them, their friends and their families.”

The car crash reconstruction event at Rock gets underway at 7pm.