It was a rainy day in Northern Ireland when Matthew Broderick crashed into an oncoming car while driving with his then-girlfriend and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off co-star, Jennifer Grey.
Matthew had been driving near Enniskillen on August 5th, 1987, when he suddenly swerved into traffic, hitting and killing 28-year-old Anna Gallagher and her 63-year-old mother, Margaret Doherty.
The star had no recollection of the events, and ended up in hospital with a concussion, broken ribs, a broken leg, and a collapsed lung, while Jennifer walked away with severe whiplash when her ligaments were ripped from her neck.
“I don’t remember even getting up in the morning. I don’t remember making my bed,” Matthew recalled to The New York Post years later.
“What I first remember is waking up in the hospital, with a very strange feeling going on in my leg.”
Meanwhile, Jennifer was awake for the whole thing and vividly recalled the horrific accident in a 2022 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I thought he was dead,” she said.
“I didn’t even know there were two other women who were tragically killed at the time. It’s just something that you just don’t come back from in the same way.”
“Being alone on a country road in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around or conscious was pretty terrifying…It led to so many other things in my life,” she continued.
The Dirty Dancing actress added that the accident was one of the “top three traumas of my life, maybe top one”.
Matthew was fined a mere $175 and charged with careless driving, which greatly angered Margaret and Anna’s family.
“Of course, you wonder if he got off lightly because of who he was,” said Martin Doherty, Margaret’s son, to The Belfast Telegraph. “He got the same punishment he would have got if he’d run over cattle.”
Martin later publicly forgave Matthew for the accident, telling The New York Post: “He didn’t kill my mother and sister deliberately. There were strong feelings at the time, but I have since forgiven him and feel no anger toward him.”
Read the full article here
