Community numbed by triple road tragedy
Preparations are today under way for the funerals of three friends who died in a road crash in Co Mayo.
The three delivery men for Irish Pride Bakery lost their lives in the head-on collision outside Ballinrobe yesterday evening.
They were named as 21-year-old Aaron Morley who lived in Ballinrobe and his cousin, Pat Morley, 25, who was working in Athlone.
The third victim was 21-year-old Jonathan Donovan, who lived in the nearby parish of The Neale.
They were returning from a trip to Castlebar when the car they were travelling in collided with a pick-up truck and careered across the road into a stone wall.
Parish priest Monsignor Tom Shannon, who was among the first on the scene around 7pm, today said a sense of numbness had swept across Ballinrobe.
The town suffered another triple tragedy in 1984 when three members of the same family drowned in a boating accident on nearby Lough Mask.
He said: “It was a sad and lonely night last night, let me tell you.
“When the families returned from the county hospital after going there to identify their sons and hand over their bodies for the post mortems, all night long there was a steady stream of people to-ing and fro-ing to New Street because the families live in that estate of 30 houses.
“The grief was palpable. In the case of the parents, it was a sore grief and a hurting grief.
“The people that gathered there were numb, mostly silent, the occasional word. It was mostly sad and sombre.”
Fr Shannon said the knew the three men since he came to the Ballinrobe in 1984.
“For me personally it’s a terrible loss. I was with them all through childhood and adolescence, through primary school, through secondary school and beyond. They served Mass for me and they were great helpers for me in so may ways.
“Pat was a staunch member of the Legion of Mary and delivered the papers and people would know his friendliness and his smile.”
He referred to the boating ragedy in 1984 on Lough Mask.
“Now 22 years later we have to come to terms yet shock and the enormous grief has been brought to the entire community yet again by this triple tragedy.”
The deaths bring to 318 the number of people killed on the country’s roads so far this year. The figure is down by 11 on the number killed during the same period last year.
Superintendent Padraic O’Toole, who is heading the investigation into the accident, appealed for information from any witnesses who may have seen the collision take place.
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