Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Gray have rarely spoken out about their car accident in 1987 that killed two women, but that all changed when the… Dirty Dancing actress candidly candid about the fatal accident in May 2022.
“I was the only living witness because Matthew survived, but he was unconscious, had amnesia and was badly injured,” police said. from the corner author revealed to entertainment tonight about the crash, which took place on a rainy night in Ireland with Broderick at the wheel and the actress in the passenger seat. (The Ferris Bueller’s Day Off costars were in a relationship at the time.)
“I thought he was dead,” Gray continued. “I didn’t even know there were two other women who died tragically at that time. It’s just something you just don’t come back from the same way.”
The Red Dawn star further told the outlet that the head-on collision was one of the “top three traumas in my life, maybe the best.”
The Fatal Crash — Which Happened Just Days Earlier Dirty Dancing was released – changed Gray’s life forever. “It’s very hard to describe when you’re having a near-death experience and being present with other people’s deaths,” she continued. “Being alone on a country road in the middle of nowhere with no one else around or conscious was pretty terrifying… It led to so many other things in my life.”
The victims who died in the crash were Margaret Doherty, who was 63 at the time of her death, and her daughter, Anna Gallagher, who was 28.
Broderick, who pleaded guilty to careless driving and paid a $175 fine — but was never charged with vehicular manslaughter — was deeply concerned about the victims of the crash immediately after the collision.
“He kept saying, ‘Did I hurt them? Did I hurt them?'” a member of the fire service recalled at the time.
“I think about family in Ireland all the time,” Gray noted in her May 2022 interview with ET† The Producers alum does too.
“It was extremely difficult to process what happened,” Broderick, who met the surviving relatives, confessed in 2002, although he noted that the passage of time — and therapy — has helped.
For his part, Martin DohertyMargaret’s son and Anna’s brother, has forgiven the Broadway actor for the fatal accident.
“He didn’t intentionally kill my mother and sister,” he said in 2002 via the New York Post† “There were strong feelings at the time, but I’ve forgiven him since then and don’t feel any anger towards him.”
Scroll down for everything Broderick and Gray have said about the tragic accident:
