A TEENAGE mother and her child were buried in the same coffin yesterday following their deaths earlier this week in a car crash in Co Donegal.
Sixteen-year-old Kerry Ann Meehan took to motherhood “with gusto” when her baby Niesha was born three months ago, mourners at their joint funeral in Derry yesterday heard.
Several hundred people looked on as the single coffin carrying mother and baby was taken into St Mary’s Church in Creggan for 10am requiem Mass.
Parish priest Fr Stephen McLaughlin said the city church, its vast granite-clad walls sparkling in the morning sunshine, had witnessed many tragic funerals down through the years, including during the Troubles.
“But nothing prepares you for the sight of a coffin that contains both the mother and the child. As mother and child, they were bonded in life and now they are bonded together in death,” he said.
Funeral Mass was concelebrated by Fr Willie Bradley of St Eunan’s Cathedral parish in Letterkenny. The congregation heard that he had attended the young mother and infant at the scene of Monday night’s crash.
The car in which they were travelling was in collision with an oncoming four-wheel drive vehicle towing a trailer full of sheep at Tullygay, three kilometres from Letterkenny.
Kerry Ann’s boyfriend and father of Niesha, Christopher Hanlon (18), from Lettermacaward, Co Donegal, who was driving the car, was seriously injured in the crash. He is critical but stable at Letterkenny General Hospital. Fr McLaughlin led the congregation yesterday in prayers for his recovery.
The parish priest also offered sympathy to Kerry Ann’s mother Ann Meehan, her younger siblings, Nathan (13) and Courtney (10), and her Creggan-based grandparents Mary and Jim Meehan.
Ann Meehan had moved to Manor View, Letterkenny, from her native Derry only last year with her young family.
Fr McLaughlin said despite her youth, Kerry Ann was a capable mother with a caring nature. She had “a great sense of humour” and “could bring light and joy into the day”.
“The birth of Niesha about three months ago had completely altered life for Kerry Ann, but even at a tender age she had taken to the task of motherhood with great gusto and with a genuine sense of responsibility.”
Meanwhile, the driver of the other vehicle, a man in his 40s from Kerrykeel, Co Donegal, has been released from Letterkenny General Hospital.
Gardaí have renewed their appeal for witnesses to the head-on collision.