Kevin Skelton told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry he can't get 'the smell of burning flesh' out of his head
A man has told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry how he found his wife lying face down in rubble in the aftermath of the massacre.
He said his wife had welcomed a Romanian orphan into their home in 1997, an act he described as “pure kindness”. Following his wife’s death, Mr Skelton maintained the family’s link to the charity and he eventually married the mother of a Romanian girl who had stayed at his home. Asked if he thought often about the fact that his family had walked past the car moments before it exploded, Mr Skelton said “yes”. He told the inquiry he had become “fed up” with shopping for shoes so left his wife and daughter Shauna in SD Kells while he went into a separate shop. He said as he was about to leave this shop, the bomb exploded.
“When you start digging, some of the things I witnessed, that no human being should have to live with. I was there in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just horrendous. There are things that stays with me, the smell of burning flesh, I can’t get that out of my head, the cries of people.” He told the inquiry that he was ushered out of SD Kells but kept going back to search for his daughter, stating “nobody could calm me down”.
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