Relatives of Veda Short (56) recall a ‘loving wife, mother and grandmother’
Lorraine Wilson was remembered at the Omagh bombing inquiry as an easygoing person who loved life. Photograph: Omagh Bombing Inquiry/Family handout/PA WireThe Omagh bombing Inquiry heard that Lorraine Wilson was working in an Oxfam shop in the Co Tyrone town on the day of the Real IRA attack, which killed 31 people, including unborn twins. Lorraine had wanted to buy her school uniform out of her wages.
“We started asking people if they had seen Lorraine but you could see how traumatised people were. Some were covered in debris and some people just could not speak,” they said. The inquiry was told the family were brought to a temporary morgue at an army camp on Sunday to identify Lorraine’s body. Undated family handout file photos of victims of the Omagh bombing on August 15, 1998, James Barker, Esther Gibson, Sean McGrath, Gareth Conway, and Elizabeth Rush, Veda Short, Alan Radford Fred White, Lorraine Wilson, Geraldine Breslin, Oran Doherty and Aidan Gallagher, Bryan White and Debra-Anne Cartwright. Photograph: Family handouts/PA
A statement from her four children – Alison Crozier, Frances Henry, Ian Short and Elaine Magowan – was read to the inquiry by solicitor Conor Cullen. It described Mrs Short as someone who “never had a bad word to say about anyone”. They said their father “was a broken man from that day on” and felt he had “nothing left to live for”.
Mother-of-four Philomena Skelton was 39 when she died in the blast while on a shopping trip with her husband and three daughters. Following his wife’s death, Mr Skelton maintained the family’s link to the charity and eventually married the mother of the Romanian girl who had stayed at his home. “I walked out and went in through where the window was in SD Kells and I found her lying face down in the rubble,” he said.
A stranger later asked if his daughter had ginger hair and when he said she did, Mr Skelton was told she was in the hospital.Ninety minutes later Mr Skelton found out that his other two daughters were alive. None of the family attended the hearing, with Mr Hughes’ statement saying: “None of us feel we have the strength to do so.”
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