I FOUND MY WIFE DEAD
I FOUND MY WIFE DEAD
By NIC NORTH
Kevin tells of frantic search in rubble
DESPERATE Kevin Skelton was showered in glass but kept on searching for his wife - 30 seconds later he stumbled across her broken body in the rubble of the Omagh bombing.
Kevin knelt and cradled the lifeless form of Philomena whose clothes had been torn from her by the force of the blast.
Clutching his only photograph of his dead wife in a shaky hand, he wept yesterday: "She was lying there like a raggie doll.
"I knew she must have been killed instantly."
Blown
Lorry driver Kevin, 43, was shopping with his family when the terrorists struck.
He was looking for bargains in a discount store while Philomena, 39, went next door to buy brown school shoes for their 13-year-old daughter Shauna.
Kevin heard the explosion in the street outside and ran for the exit at the same time as the plate-glass door was blown off its hinges.
Cut by flying glass, he picked himself up and dashed to S D Kells shop where he found his wife. He felt for her pulse but she was dead. Roman Catholic Kevin stayed kneeling over the body.
He wanted to give her one last cuddle, but police officers gently pulled him away and told him he must leave.
Outside, he began to panic because he realised he did not know where Shauna and his two other daughters were.
Fearing that they, too, might be lying dead, Kevin returned to the store and began to search.
Police again led him away from the scene of carnage.
But again and again he broke free from the officers and went back to continue his search.
Kevin said: "This went on for an hour and a half.
"I was frantically scrabbling around, clawing at rubble and looking at bodies to see if any of them were my babies.
"Each time I got inside. I was pulled out by the police within a few minutes.
"But I was desperate and panic-stricken and I kept going back in.
"I was certain they had to be in there and I was calling out their names as I sifted through the wreckage." Miraculously, all three daughters survived the bombing. Shauna and 15-year-old Tracey were at the back of the shop when the bomb exploded and escaped the full force.
Paula, 18, was in another part of the town with boyfriend Peter Martin, 20.
Philomena - known to her husband as Mena - was at the front of the store when the blast ripped through it.
Tracey was unhurt, but Shauna's jaw was broken.
She was treated in hospital at nearby Derry, where surgeons put a metal plate in her shattered jaw and carried out skin grafts.
Jaw
At the family home in Drumquin, a village eight miles outside Omagh, Kevin said: "Somebody must have said their prayers for my girls on Saturday, but it didn't do much to help Mena.
"I cannot believe how Shauna and Tracey survived the blast. "They were only a few yards from Mena.
"I was convinced they, too were dead and spent that hour and a half going out of my mind. Every time I pulled rubble away I thought one I thought one of them would be lying underneath. It was agony."
Kevin says he had to wait until 11am yesterday to formally identify his wife's body.
He said: "She was lying on an Army trolley. They hadn't even wiped the dirt from her face. It was a sight that will live with me forever."
Kevin met when Philomena when she was 15 and married her four years later.
They would have celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on August 31, the day before Philomena's 40th birthday.
The family shopped on Saturdays just twice a year in Omagh - for school uniforms in the summer and for Christmas gifts in the autumn.
Kevin said: "Normally we'd never go into Omagh on a Saturday."
They arrived in the town on Saturday just before midday. When the bomb warning was received they were together near the courthouse where police believed the device had been placed.
They moved away, returned to their car and drove to a car park near the street where the bomb went off 30 minutes later.
Kevin described the bombers as "psychopaths and gangsters." Tears streamed down his cheeks as he stood in the kitchen of his semi- detached four-bedroom home.
He said: 'The people who did this bomb are scum.
"They say they are fighting for Ireland and the Irish people but all they are doing is killing innocent people.
"Look what they have done to this family - and hundreds of other local families in one afternoon. It is a clich�, but you see the bombings on television and think it will never happen to you."
Even in the depths of his despair, Kevin still has faith in the peace process. He said: "The killing cannot go on. It has to stop now.
"My family has been broken apart by this, but if that is what we have to pay for peace then I am afraid it might have been worth it.
"I would not want anyone to have to go through what we are going through now."
DRIVER TRAGEDY
A DRIVER died yesterday in a crash with an ambulance taking bomb victims to hospital in Belfast.
By NIC NORTH
Kevin tells of frantic search in rubble
DESPERATE Kevin Skelton was showered in glass but kept on searching for his wife - 30 seconds later he stumbled across her broken body in the rubble of the Omagh bombing.
Kevin knelt and cradled the lifeless form of Philomena whose clothes had been torn from her by the force of the blast.
Clutching his only photograph of his dead wife in a shaky hand, he wept yesterday: "She was lying there like a raggie doll.
"I knew she must have been killed instantly."
Blown
Lorry driver Kevin, 43, was shopping with his family when the terrorists struck.
He was looking for bargains in a discount store while Philomena, 39, went next door to buy brown school shoes for their 13-year-old daughter Shauna.
Kevin heard the explosion in the street outside and ran for the exit at the same time as the plate-glass door was blown off its hinges.
Cut by flying glass, he picked himself up and dashed to S D Kells shop where he found his wife. He felt for her pulse but she was dead. Roman Catholic Kevin stayed kneeling over the body.
He wanted to give her one last cuddle, but police officers gently pulled him away and told him he must leave.
Outside, he began to panic because he realised he did not know where Shauna and his two other daughters were.
Fearing that they, too, might be lying dead, Kevin returned to the store and began to search.
Police again led him away from the scene of carnage.
But again and again he broke free from the officers and went back to continue his search.
Kevin said: "This went on for an hour and a half.
"I was frantically scrabbling around, clawing at rubble and looking at bodies to see if any of them were my babies.
"Each time I got inside. I was pulled out by the police within a few minutes.
"But I was desperate and panic-stricken and I kept going back in.
"I was certain they had to be in there and I was calling out their names as I sifted through the wreckage." Miraculously, all three daughters survived the bombing. Shauna and 15-year-old Tracey were at the back of the shop when the bomb exploded and escaped the full force.
Paula, 18, was in another part of the town with boyfriend Peter Martin, 20.
Philomena - known to her husband as Mena - was at the front of the store when the blast ripped through it.
Tracey was unhurt, but Shauna's jaw was broken.
She was treated in hospital at nearby Derry, where surgeons put a metal plate in her shattered jaw and carried out skin grafts.
Jaw
At the family home in Drumquin, a village eight miles outside Omagh, Kevin said: "Somebody must have said their prayers for my girls on Saturday, but it didn't do much to help Mena.
"I cannot believe how Shauna and Tracey survived the blast. "They were only a few yards from Mena.
"I was convinced they, too were dead and spent that hour and a half going out of my mind. Every time I pulled rubble away I thought one I thought one of them would be lying underneath. It was agony."
Kevin says he had to wait until 11am yesterday to formally identify his wife's body.
He said: "She was lying on an Army trolley. They hadn't even wiped the dirt from her face. It was a sight that will live with me forever."
Kevin met when Philomena when she was 15 and married her four years later.
They would have celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on August 31, the day before Philomena's 40th birthday.
The family shopped on Saturdays just twice a year in Omagh - for school uniforms in the summer and for Christmas gifts in the autumn.
Kevin said: "Normally we'd never go into Omagh on a Saturday."
They arrived in the town on Saturday just before midday. When the bomb warning was received they were together near the courthouse where police believed the device had been placed.
They moved away, returned to their car and drove to a car park near the street where the bomb went off 30 minutes later.
Kevin described the bombers as "psychopaths and gangsters." Tears streamed down his cheeks as he stood in the kitchen of his semi- detached four-bedroom home.
He said: 'The people who did this bomb are scum.
"They say they are fighting for Ireland and the Irish people but all they are doing is killing innocent people.
"Look what they have done to this family - and hundreds of other local families in one afternoon. It is a clich�, but you see the bombings on television and think it will never happen to you."
Even in the depths of his despair, Kevin still has faith in the peace process. He said: "The killing cannot go on. It has to stop now.
"My family has been broken apart by this, but if that is what we have to pay for peace then I am afraid it might have been worth it.
"I would not want anyone to have to go through what we are going through now."
DRIVER TRAGEDY
A DRIVER died yesterday in a crash with an ambulance taking bomb victims to hospital in Belfast.
Further Information
Publisher: THE MIRROR
Ref: TM/006
Published Date: 17-Aug-98
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