The daughter of a woman killed in the Omagh bombing had pointed out the car containing the 500lb device just minutes before it exploded, the inquiry into the atrocity has heard.
Philomena Skelton (39), known as “Mena”, had been shopping for school uniforms when the Real IRA bomb ripped through the busy town centre on August 15, 1998.
The keen knitter, whose family and friends often placed orders for Christmas and birthday presents, was remembered for her kindness, which also extended to children from a Romanian orphanage (one of the youngsters she provided shelter for had only left NI a week before the bombing).
Mena had travelled into Omagh with her husband Kevin and their three daughters on the day of the blast.
“There was a wee shop that sold pens and stuff. We went in there and then two policemen came in and asked us to move on down,” Kevin Skelton told the inquiry.
“Mena went out and we followed her down. She was still looking for brown shoes. We went into McElroys but no shoes.
“We crossed over. As we walked into SD Kells, my daughter said — and it turned out to be right — “I wonder is the bomb in that car?”
“I went in next door to Mr G’s, a wee shop that sells different knick-knacks. I was only half a minute in the shop.
“As I turned to come out, the bomb went off. The front of the shop was sucked out and I walked out after it.
“I came out what was left of the door and went in through where the window was in SD Kells. I found Mena lying face down in the rubble.
“I felt for her pulse and there was none. I knew she was dead.”
Kevin recalled the immediate aftermath of the attack and the chaos that unfolded on the street while he desperately began searching for his daughters.
“When I started digging, I saw things no human being should have had to look at,” he recalled.
“I was there in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It was horrendous. There are things that stay with me. The smell of burning flesh — I can’t get that out of my head.
“The cries of people. Nobody asked if you were a Catholic or a Protestant or anything else.”
Kevin identified his wife at the Army’s makeshift morgue. As a result of the horrific nature of Mrs Skelton’s injuries, the family were forced to have a closed-casket funeral.
“When we came to take her home on the Tuesday, I got into the car at the house and, I don’t know why, but I got out of the car and looked at my mother,” he said.
“I said: ‘Don’t be one bit surprised if we can’t open the coffin.’ The undertaker told me I couldn’t open the coffin. It remained closed for the wake.
“That had a big effect. You never got a chance to say goodbye. Everything was so cold and rushed.
“You never had a chance to sit and have time with your loved one. It was taken out of your hands, nearly.
“I remember carrying her coffin down the street… And the crowd — I’ve never seen anything like it.
“I said to my son: ‘If your mammy woke up now and saw the crowd, she would run down a mouse hole to get away.’”
The football referee also told the inquiry he had known “quite a few” other victims who were killed in the bombing.
“I knew Brian McCrory very well. I knew Godfrey Wilson’s girl [Lorraine],” he said.
“We found out about others then, the Marlows. I had refereed Jolene the Saturday before in the ladies’ county final between St Macartan’s and Dungannon.
“I knew her dad very well. I went up to the house; her remains weren’t home yet.
“Her jersey was lying on the bed, spread out, and the match programme was down in the corner, opened where my photograph and story was.
“That will never leave me. A young girl in the prime of life, just starting out, to be blown to pieces in the town… for what?”
Kevin told the inquiry he still has many questions about what happened and admitted he is cynical about the prospect of getting answers.
“All I want is the truth,” he said.
“On that particular day, in God’s name, in a garrison town, why was the Army not brought in to clear the street?
“I don’t trust the Irish Government. I don’t trust the British Government either. They lied through their teeth every time we met them.
“I don’t see the Irish Government playing ball with this inquiry. But the bomb was made in the South; the people who built it were from the South.
“The car was driven from the South and planted in Omagh, and they drove home again. There are some of them still walking the streets.
“This inquiry, is it going to produce something for the families now? I just want to get on with what bit of life we have left.”