The father of a teenage girl killed in the Omagh bomb wiped blood from her eyes in the morgue and told her, “This is all I have of you now,” the inquiry into the atrocity has heard.
Lorraine Wilson (15) had been volunteering in a charity shop at the time of the Real IRA blast that claimed the lives of 29 people, including a mother carrying unborn twins, on August 15, 1998.
The inquiry heard how the teenager was academically minded and had begged her parents to move to France after returning from a cross-community teambuilding trip abroad.
On the day of the bombing, Lorraine had been evacuated to Market Street from the Oxfam shop where she was working alongside her friend Samantha McFarland.
A statement on behalf of her mum and siblings was read to the inquiry by solicitor Beth McMullan.
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Her family recalled arriving at the hospital after the bombing to look for her.
“The scene at the hospital was shocking. Nurses and doctors were running around, people on stretchers, blood on the floors, people standing around in confused states,” they said.
“The curtains around her were drenched in water and blood.”
“It was a harrowing scene to take in but there was still no sign of Lorraine.
“We then went to the leisure centre, where we knew many people were being told to go and where the police were collecting information and providing updates for the families.
“All of the family members at the leisure centre were in such a state of shock and trauma. I remember seeing someone having to be given sedation, and some were lying on the floor.
“We just waited at the leisure centre most of Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday for any news of Lorraine and eventually they asked us for a picture of her.
“We watched as other families were told of the death of their loved ones and were being taken to the morgue to identify their loved ones and then brought back. This was very difficult.”
Eventually, the family was taken by minibus to the makeshift Army morgue where they identified Lorraine’s body.
“Lorraine was on a table, lying on a stretcher. I could see curtains around her and we were told not to touch her,” they said.
“We could see the injuries from the shrapnel wounds, mostly to her face. The curtains around her were drenched in water and blood.
“We all broke down, trying to grasp the reality of the situation we were in. It was very traumatic. It felt like all the air had gone out of the room.
“We were fighting emotionally with what had happened and our own emotions. I remember we kept saying: ‘This should never have happened.’
“There was a little pool of blood in Lorraine’s eye. I remember Dad asking for a tissue to collect the little pool of blood and he said: ‘This is all I have of you now.’”
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The inquiry heard that the family was left “completely numb” as they prepared for Lorraine’s wake and funeral.
“On arriving home after identifying Lorraine, we just closed the doors,” they said.
“We needed a few hours to ourselves as a family to collect our emotions and try to come to terms with what had just happened and to let our emotions out.
“We were all just completely numb. We just all felt so completely lost and heartbroken. It all felt unreal. I remember saying: ‘This can’t have really happened. She can’t be gone.’
“When Lorraine was brought home to be waked at Mum and Dad’s, my mother had to have a doctor come to give her sedation to help her cope with the trauma.
“It was very stressful dealing with people coming to the house.”
Lorraine’s friend sang Elton John’s Candle In The Wind at her funeral, which was attended by large crowds. Her sister Denise gave a eulogy at the service.
“Getting all of our thoughts and memories together and putting them into words was difficult,” she said.
“The impact on our family has been very traumatic and affected us all very differently as individuals.
“My father and brother had been dealing with suicidal thoughts. My father cried so much he had ulcers in his eyes and my brother tried to take his own life.
“My younger brother has had to live in a world where his parents were always away in the pursuit of justice, attending meetings and watching a father be consumed by trying to achieve justice for his daughter.
“It was a life that had changed drastically.”