AFTERNOON OUT TURNS INTO HORROR SCENE AS PEOPLE FLEE INTO BLAST
Afternoon out turns into horror scene as people flee into blast
THE HUSBAND of a woman injured in the blast on Saturday condemned the bombers for issuing a misleading warning.
Patricia Gallagher was evacuated from an Omagh bar - and ran, along with dozens of others, headlong into the seat of the blast.
Husband Micky said: "She was running from the bar thinking she was getting away and she ran right into where the bomb went off.
"When I heard the bang I went straight to the courthouse where they said the bomb was but it wasn't there.
"Then I realised it was further down and then I started to see all the chaos and the injured people.
"To think they ran into that bomb, it's terrible. We've had so many atrocities here in Northern Ireland but just nothing like this. I never thought I would see anything like it, even here."
Mr Gallagher, 36, who was celebrating his 16th wedding anniversary this weekend, said he wished the bombers could have seen the carnage they inflicted.
"If these people could only see what I saw in that hospital, the carnage and the misery and the sorrow. I can't understand what they possibly thought there could be to gain."
He wept as he described the scene which greeted him when he arrived at the hospital where his wife was treated. "It was a complete nightmare. It was like something out of a horror film.
"People were crying and screaming and the staff were trying to cope as best they could, but the injured just kept coming."
Patricia, 36, suffered extensive shrapnel injuries as well as fractures and a neck injury and was transferred to Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital.
"When I found her in casualty she was in a terrible state, covered in shrapnel wounds from head to toe and in terrible pain," he said.
Mr Gallagher, an international boxing referee, and his wife run a bar, Gallagher's, in the centre of Omagh.
Meanwhile, Lindsay Hall wept uncontrollably yesterday as he described how his 12-year-old son lost one of his legs in the blast.
The father-of-three was at home yesterday when he found out that his wife Gwen and young son Alastair had been caught up in the carnage.
Alastair was airlifted to a hospital in Londonderry and his mother was also taken there for treatment for multiple fractures and facial injuries. "How could they do this to innocent, ordinary people on a Saturday afternoon," Mr Hall cried as he watched the latest TV news pictures of the tragedy.
He sat in the front room of his house on a quiet street in Omagh, surrounded by pictures of his three boys, constantly wiping tears away from his face with a towel.
Mr Hall appeared a broken man, a world away from the image of him standing smiling with his children on photographs adorning the walls in his house.
He produced a rugby ball from the 1991 World Cup and said: "Alastair loved playing but he will never be able to again now. "He was out with his mum buying some trousers for going back to school when the warning came.
"They came out of the shop and tried to get back to the car. If they'd stayed in the shop they would both have been killed.
"He's only 12. I'm 57, why couldn't it have happened to me?"
Mr Hall's eldest son Michael, 21, who graduated from Cardiff University this year, is heading home from Edinburgh, where he now lives and works.
His other son Gareth, 19, is returning from a Camp America placement in the United States to be with his stricken father, who today hopes to be able to see his wife and youngest son in hospital.
A distraught father of four identified his wife today after he found her lying on the rubble just seconds after yesterday's blast.
Kevin Skelton waited all night before he could go to the morgue to see his partner of almost 20 years who "hadn't a mark on her face when I saw her".
He had been on a shopping trip with his wife Philomena and the couple's three daughters in Omagh while their son Ray, 16, was on a fishing trip.
Mr Skelton was in the neighbouring shop to his wife and daughters when the bomb exploded.
"I came outside and my wife was lying on top of the rubble," he said. "She was face down and the clothes had been blown off her."
He said that he felt for a pulse but when he realised she was dead he then began a frantic one-and-a-half-hour search for his daughters.
Paula, 18, and Tracy, 15, escaped unscathed but 13-year-old Shauna suffered a broken jaw, he said.
Mr Skelton, 43, who lives with his family on the outskirts of the town, described his wife as a very homely, family-loving person.
Courtesy of Irish Examiner
THE HUSBAND of a woman injured in the blast on Saturday condemned the bombers for issuing a misleading warning.
Patricia Gallagher was evacuated from an Omagh bar - and ran, along with dozens of others, headlong into the seat of the blast.
Husband Micky said: "She was running from the bar thinking she was getting away and she ran right into where the bomb went off.
"When I heard the bang I went straight to the courthouse where they said the bomb was but it wasn't there.
"Then I realised it was further down and then I started to see all the chaos and the injured people.
"To think they ran into that bomb, it's terrible. We've had so many atrocities here in Northern Ireland but just nothing like this. I never thought I would see anything like it, even here."
Mr Gallagher, 36, who was celebrating his 16th wedding anniversary this weekend, said he wished the bombers could have seen the carnage they inflicted.
"If these people could only see what I saw in that hospital, the carnage and the misery and the sorrow. I can't understand what they possibly thought there could be to gain."
He wept as he described the scene which greeted him when he arrived at the hospital where his wife was treated. "It was a complete nightmare. It was like something out of a horror film.
"People were crying and screaming and the staff were trying to cope as best they could, but the injured just kept coming."
Patricia, 36, suffered extensive shrapnel injuries as well as fractures and a neck injury and was transferred to Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital.
"When I found her in casualty she was in a terrible state, covered in shrapnel wounds from head to toe and in terrible pain," he said.
Mr Gallagher, an international boxing referee, and his wife run a bar, Gallagher's, in the centre of Omagh.
Meanwhile, Lindsay Hall wept uncontrollably yesterday as he described how his 12-year-old son lost one of his legs in the blast.
The father-of-three was at home yesterday when he found out that his wife Gwen and young son Alastair had been caught up in the carnage.
Alastair was airlifted to a hospital in Londonderry and his mother was also taken there for treatment for multiple fractures and facial injuries. "How could they do this to innocent, ordinary people on a Saturday afternoon," Mr Hall cried as he watched the latest TV news pictures of the tragedy.
He sat in the front room of his house on a quiet street in Omagh, surrounded by pictures of his three boys, constantly wiping tears away from his face with a towel.
Mr Hall appeared a broken man, a world away from the image of him standing smiling with his children on photographs adorning the walls in his house.
He produced a rugby ball from the 1991 World Cup and said: "Alastair loved playing but he will never be able to again now. "He was out with his mum buying some trousers for going back to school when the warning came.
"They came out of the shop and tried to get back to the car. If they'd stayed in the shop they would both have been killed.
"He's only 12. I'm 57, why couldn't it have happened to me?"
Mr Hall's eldest son Michael, 21, who graduated from Cardiff University this year, is heading home from Edinburgh, where he now lives and works.
His other son Gareth, 19, is returning from a Camp America placement in the United States to be with his stricken father, who today hopes to be able to see his wife and youngest son in hospital.
A distraught father of four identified his wife today after he found her lying on the rubble just seconds after yesterday's blast.
Kevin Skelton waited all night before he could go to the morgue to see his partner of almost 20 years who "hadn't a mark on her face when I saw her".
He had been on a shopping trip with his wife Philomena and the couple's three daughters in Omagh while their son Ray, 16, was on a fishing trip.
Mr Skelton was in the neighbouring shop to his wife and daughters when the bomb exploded.
"I came outside and my wife was lying on top of the rubble," he said. "She was face down and the clothes had been blown off her."
He said that he felt for a pulse but when he realised she was dead he then began a frantic one-and-a-half-hour search for his daughters.
Paula, 18, and Tracy, 15, escaped unscathed but 13-year-old Shauna suffered a broken jaw, he said.
Mr Skelton, 43, who lives with his family on the outskirts of the town, described his wife as a very homely, family-loving person.
Courtesy of Irish Examiner
Further Information
Publisher: THE EXAMINER
Ref: TEX/010
Published Date: 17-Aug-98
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