Tragic death of baby boy
Football stars Duncan Ferguson (inset left) and Matthew Le Tissier Drogs in a friendly clash at United Park. (inset right) were to take on the
Wednesday March 17 2010
AFTER the tragic circumstances which eventuated in a baby being recovered from a water-filled quarry under Drogheda's Viaduct an air of disbelief had descended on St Mary's Church when 18-monthold Jack Everitt Brennan's remains was placed at the foot of the altar in a tiny white coffin.
Dozens of floral wreaths bearing messages of sympathy, others expressing shock lay behind the wooden pews at the back of the packed church.
Relatives, friends and others who did not know Jack but who had come to pray for him, wept openly as the enormity of what had happened in Drogheda days earlier became painfully apparent.
Fr Denis Nulty told how words failed when it comes to understanding the death of a child.
'The parish, the community, the country, has been moved by Jack's death, but none more so than his parents, grandparents and extended family.'
President Mary McAleese and Bishop of Meath, Michael Smith, had also expressed their sympathies, he said.
Timothy Darrell Kidman, the Slane Castle gamekeeper shot to death in 1989, was to be the subject of a TV programme to hit Irish screens later in the year.
Slane Castle owner, Lord Henry Mountcharles, who was initially reluctant to contribute to the programme but who eventually agreed, said this week he felt it important to air his feelings about a case which 'still fills me with horror.'
The popular 27-yearold gamekeeper, who was believed to have confronted his killer before being gunned down was shot in September 1989. His body was found on a Sunday morning 12 hours after he went missing in shrubbery on the edge of the rolling Meath estate.
A Drogheda man who was 19 at the time was serving a sentence for the manslaughter of Mr Kidman.
An American journalist was also penning a book on the tragedy.
