There were heartbreaking scenes as a brother and sister killed in last week’s crash in Aughnacloy were laid to rest today in Strabane.
Hundreds of people turned up to pay their final respects to Dan and Christine McKane at the Church of Immaculate Conception.
Fr Declan Boland thanked mourners which including First Minister Designate Michelle O’Neill for the many “spontaneous gestures” of support.
He said “This appalling tragedy has brought has brought such intense grief and suffering to this area but I have seen shafts of light.
“The golden loving heart of our people.”
The thousands of people who attended a special rosary service on Friday including many young people who have been left broken, he added.
“They didn’t just talk the talk, they walked the walk,” the priest said.
“It was one of the finest acts of community love and compassion that I have witnesses in almost 50 years of diocesan priesthood.”
The priest also thanked first responders who attended the scene and a local priest who tended “our little family as they lay broken and dying on the road.”
The brother and sister died alongside their aunt Julia McSorley when the minivan they were in collided with a lorry near Aughnacloy last Thursday as they returned home from an aunt’s funeral in England.
It comes after the community of Glenock gathered on Sunday to bid farewell to Ms McSorley, another victim of the crash.
The 75-year-old was remembered at her funeral as “dynamic, joyful, helpful, selfless, smiling, kind, bubbly, happily putting everyone else before herself”.
Pic by RTE.
