One of the youngest victims of the Omagh bombing ‘personified’ the hope created by the Good Friday Agreement, the inquiry into the atrocity was told today.
Shaun McLaughlin was 12 years old when he was killed along with 30 other people, including unborn twins, on August 15, 1998.
Shaun was part of a group from Buncrana, which included Spanish exchange students, who travelled to Omagh that day to visit the Ulster American Folk Park.
After visiting the history park, the group travelled into Omagh and were caught up in the devastating Real IRA bombing.
Shaun’s friend, eight-year-old Oran Doherty, was also killed in the attack, which happened just months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998.
Shaun was the eldest of his parents’ three children.
His mother Patricia, who attended the inquiry today, described him as a ‘lively and lovely boy, always happy and content with something to smile about’.
“Shaun personified the hope in this island following the Good Friday Agreement, the hope of peace.
“Only a few months before the bomb, Shaun had written a poem which he presented to the then President of Ireland, Mary McAleese.”
The poem read:
Orange and green it doesn’t matter
United now don’t shatter our dream
Scatter the seeds of peace over our landscape
So we can travel hand in hand across the bridge of hope
In the commemoration of Shaun, his mother, told the inquiry that waiting for news of him following the bomb was the ‘longest night of my life’.
She said that, for her, time hadn’t healed the wounds of what happened in Omagh, and that she was numb for six weeks after the death of her son.
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