Commissioner says ‘heroic death’ should not wipe memories of special garda

Garda Tony Golden may have died a "heroic death", but that would not stop his "Garda family" remembering the life of a special colleague and loving family man, Garda Commissioner Noirín O'Sullivan has told his funeral mass.

Addressing the 300-strong congregation that filled the tiny St Oliver Plunkett's Church, Blackrock, Co Louth, Commissioner O'Sullivan said the pain and shock at her colleague's murder had been felt, not only in the community where he lived, worked and was murdered, but right across the State.

“The pain and sympathy evoked by Tony’s death in the wider community has touched every one of us who works with and wears the blue uniform of An Garda Siochana,” she said.

“But the hero he became in death should not wipe from our memories of the person he was in life. Above all, Tony was a family man, a man living within a ring of love forged by himself and Nicola.”

And while the couple’s three children – Alex, Andrew and Lucy all aged under eight years – had lost their father, they had already felt the benefit of his loving and caring nature.

It was “achingly sad” to accept the plans he had made with Nicola and hopes they shared for the future would not happen in the way they had envisaged.

She added “Tony’s three beautiful children will need help to remember the best of what has been taken away” from them.

“To remember being hefted onto the big shoulders of their daddy to get the very best view. And to remember the strong, sure hands of him. To remember the sound of his car arriving outside and the excitement of rushing to tell him all the things that were so important that happened that day.”

Her remarks were broadcast live on big screens to the estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people – approximately 4,000 of them gardaí – who lined the streets of Blackrock.

The uniformed gardaí who came out to pay their respects formed a spectacular continuous guard of honour both sides of the village streets on the shore of Dundalk Bay.

The lines they formed stretched between the home Garda Golden shared with wife Nicola and their three young children around one kilometre from the church that hosted his funeral mass.

Commissioner O'Sullivan said while Garda Golden first lived with his family in Mayo and then in Blackrock where his wife was from, he was also a member of the Garda family which cherished memories made "when it comes to one of our own".

“We bring them with us on our journey,” she said of passed colleagues. “(They are) in the stories we tell in the dark interiors of patrol cars, when waiting for a kettle to boil in the station, when we are out on lonely checkpoints. We will tell stories about Tony Golden in the months and years to come and in those stories we will remember the totality of him.

“He was a proud, loving family man and he was a garda who loved being a garda. He was a hero protecting a frightened woman and her father. He laid down his life doing what he had sworn to do. He had sworn to be a guardian of the peace.”