A mother who lost her 16-year-old son in the Omagh bombing two years ago said yesterday she felt uneasy and tried to persuade him to leave the town centre minutes before the explosion. Mrs Marion Radford had gone into the town centre with her son, Alan, who had just finished at Omagh High School and was due to begin a catering course.
At the inquest on her son, Mrs Radford said she had learned about the bomb warning: "I said to Alan, `Maybe we should go home', but he said `Wait a minute. It's probably only a hoax'." Mrs Radford said that after they separated and she went to buy vegetables she still felt nervous and just wanted to leave - "All I could think of was to find Alan and go home."
After the explosion she could not find him, and she was taken to hospital with injuries.
Mrs Radford told the coroner, Mr John Leckey, that she had glass fragments removed from her head. Asked if she was recovering well, she replied: "From the physical injury, yes; from the mental injury, no." She added: "I can't understand why people can't live in peace and let people of different religions worship in peace." Mr Gerald McAlinden, representing the Radford family, said the family hoped the whole community would stand together to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again.
The coroner said that not only fate but "the evil perpetrators of this atrocity" had put an end to Alan's life and career hopes.
Mr Leckey added: "There still are evil people out there. There have been two bomb hoax calls in Omagh since this started, one yesterday afternoon. You really wonder what motivates people to cause additional distress on top of what the people of Omagh are underdgoing at the present time." The inquest on 21-month-old Breda Devine, the second youngest victim of the bombing, was told her uncle found her still strapped into her buggy, covered in rubble, after the explosion.
It heard that Breda's mother, Tracey, had spent almost eight weeks unconscious in intensive care in hospital after the bombing. When she came to, she had to cope with news of the loss of her daughter, and her brother and his fiancee had also been seriously injured.
Breda's father, Mr Manus Paul Devine, who gave evidence of having identified the body of his daughter, told the coroner that his wife's recovery from her serious injuries had been a slow and drawn-out process.
Physically she was badly scarred, but mentally she was coping well. They had three other children, aged from eight years to four, who were very aware of what had happened.
Mr Gary McGillion gave evidence of going to Omagh town centre on the day of the bombing with his sister, Tracey, her daughter, Breda, and his fiancee, Ms Donna Marie Keys.
They were crossing Market Street when the explosion happened. "I felt a massive electric shock," he said. "I remember flying through the air and hitting the road face first." He got to his feet and realised he was on fire - "I put the fire out by ripping my burning shirt off." The inquest on Mrs Olive Hawkes, 60-year-old mother of two, was told by her daughter, Mrs Mandy Walker, she had been "a wonderful person . . . much loved and needed by her family", with enormous vitality.
Neither this inquest, nor time, would ease her family's grief and sense of loss, said Mrs Walker: "Indeed it has done nothing more than to paint a vivid picture in our minds forever of the day when the so-called `Real IRA' destroyed our family unit and robbed us of the opportunity to even say goodbye to the most precious gift that God could have given us."
The inquest on Samantha McFarland, aged 17, was told by her father, Gerald, that she had been working as a volunteer in the Oxfam shop in Omagh with her best friend, Lorraine Wilson. They were both killed when the shop was evacuated and they went to the point where the bomb detonated.
In a statement after yesterday's hearings, Mr David Bolton, director of community care with the Sperrin Lakeland Trust, said that as the end of the inquest approached many of the bereaved and injured had mixed feelings.
Two important considerations remained. First, the sense of injustice was still deeply felt. Second, the desire that this should not happen to others was so plain that it hardly needed words to express it. "Those who have really listened to the unspeakable detail must reach the conclusion that the violence, in whatever form it takes, must stop."
The inquests will resume on Monday.