MOTHER OBLITERATED AS SHE BROUGHT SHOES FOR HER CHILD
Mother obliterated as she bought shoes for her child
By MARESE McDONAGH
PHILOMENA Skelton went to Omagh just two Saturdays every year - to buy school uniforms for her children and do the Christmas shopping.
Yesterday her husband Kevin, a well-known Tyrone GAA referee described how the 39-year-old mother was left lifeless on a pile of burning rubble 30 seconds after him to buy a pair of brown shoes for their 13-year-old daughter Shauna.
He had popped into a shop next door while Philomena and her daughters Tracy and Shauna went into Kells clothes shop.
As the bomb went off he was walking towards the front of the shop. "I turned to come up the floor and met the front of the building
coming in. I walked out through the plate glass door as it shattered I was walking through it. I was walking and it was coming to meet me. "
When he went outside he saw "the vacuum of the bomb going the street."
As the area disintegrated before his eves he looked through a window and saw his wife 'Mena' lying face down in the rubble of the clothes shop.
"She was like a raggedy doll. The clothes were blown clean off her. I reached for her arm to find if was there any pulse. I could get no pulse. I knew instantly she was dead."
Mr Skelton, from nearby Drumquin, told on radio how he dug in the rubble to try and find his two children as police repeatedly pushed him away for fear of another bomb. He found Tracy (15) kneeling over her mother trying to find a pulse.
It was another 1 1/2 hours before he found Shauna, who had been blown out of the shop.
She's in Altnagalvin hospital in Derry where her mouth had been wired because of a broken jaw. The teenager also has a hole in her neck and needs plastic surgery, added Mr Skelton.
"She's going to be scarred for life, such a lovely youngster."
Paula (18), the couple's oldest daughter, had been on the street with her boyfriend. "The police had been pushing them down and if the bomb had gone off about five seconds later she would've been killed," said the distraught father.
The carnage on the street was worse than "a war picture on TV." Because the bomb burst the water mains he saw bodies being washed down the street.
There were no words to describe the people who had caused so much grief to so many. "There would've been youngsters sitting on the car that the bomb was in. These gangsters must've come into the town, seen the festival going on and couldn't get up the street and just parked it there and whatever plonker was doing the phoning he didn't know."
By MARESE McDONAGH
PHILOMENA Skelton went to Omagh just two Saturdays every year - to buy school uniforms for her children and do the Christmas shopping.
Yesterday her husband Kevin, a well-known Tyrone GAA referee described how the 39-year-old mother was left lifeless on a pile of burning rubble 30 seconds after him to buy a pair of brown shoes for their 13-year-old daughter Shauna.
He had popped into a shop next door while Philomena and her daughters Tracy and Shauna went into Kells clothes shop.
As the bomb went off he was walking towards the front of the shop. "I turned to come up the floor and met the front of the building
coming in. I walked out through the plate glass door as it shattered I was walking through it. I was walking and it was coming to meet me. "
When he went outside he saw "the vacuum of the bomb going the street."
As the area disintegrated before his eves he looked through a window and saw his wife 'Mena' lying face down in the rubble of the clothes shop.
"She was like a raggedy doll. The clothes were blown clean off her. I reached for her arm to find if was there any pulse. I could get no pulse. I knew instantly she was dead."
Mr Skelton, from nearby Drumquin, told on radio how he dug in the rubble to try and find his two children as police repeatedly pushed him away for fear of another bomb. He found Tracy (15) kneeling over her mother trying to find a pulse.
It was another 1 1/2 hours before he found Shauna, who had been blown out of the shop.
She's in Altnagalvin hospital in Derry where her mouth had been wired because of a broken jaw. The teenager also has a hole in her neck and needs plastic surgery, added Mr Skelton.
"She's going to be scarred for life, such a lovely youngster."
Paula (18), the couple's oldest daughter, had been on the street with her boyfriend. "The police had been pushing them down and if the bomb had gone off about five seconds later she would've been killed," said the distraught father.
The carnage on the street was worse than "a war picture on TV." Because the bomb burst the water mains he saw bodies being washed down the street.
There were no words to describe the people who had caused so much grief to so many. "There would've been youngsters sitting on the car that the bomb was in. These gangsters must've come into the town, seen the festival going on and couldn't get up the street and just parked it there and whatever plonker was doing the phoning he didn't know."
Further Information
Publisher: IRISH INDEPENDENT
Ref: II/044
Published Date: 18-Aug-98
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