Two friends killed in a road crash in Co Donegal had booked a sun holiday together, the funeral Mass of one of them heard yesterday.
The remains of Nathan Farrell (18) were brought to St Mary’s Church in Cockhill, Buncrana, in a horse-drawn carriage. His funeral took place the day after the burial of his close friend, Nathan Dixon-Gill (17).
The two were killed when the car in which they were travelling crashed into a wall and a tree outside Quigley’s Point on the Inishowen peninsula in the early hours of last Saturday.
Parish priest Fr Francis Bradley said the death of Mr Farrell, a “superb young man”, should serve as a warning to take care on the roads.
“When I see signpost after signpost around this parish saying ‘Wake’, my heart always drops a little. Over the past few days, when I saw these signs, I felt they should have read ‘Wake up’.
“I say this not only to you, as young people, but I say it to everyone, and I say it to myself: ‘Wake up. Be careful as you drive. Be mindful as you carry a precious cargo with you. Be prayerful as you get into your car and be thankful as you get out of it. Because of the events of Saturday morning, along another road, many hearts are broken and minds confused.”
Proative and respectful
Fr Bradley said Mr Farrell was by nature proactive and respectful of everyone. He was the one people turned to when something needed fixing around the house.
“From his earliest days he was an honest-to-God individual – one time having to run the gauntlet of his neighbours in Millfield when, innocently enough, he told the dog warden how many dogs everyone had: the cross ones and the lovely ones.
“His mammy’s blue-eyed boy, even as a child, even if it got him into bother, he would repeat exactly what he had been told, or what he had heard. He loved getting home from his work in Dublin, getting changed, working his hair with gel, and innocently lapping the town with his friends.
“When he went missing one day as an eight-year-old, he was found with his go-kart tractor parked at the back of a wake house, sitting in his wellies with all the adults, expressing his sorrow for their loss and asking, ‘What’s the world coming to anyway?”
Mr Farrell was due to start a new job on Tuesday last with Inishowen Engineering, three days after he died in the crash.