Shock at devoted mother’s tragic act

EVEN in death, they were inseparable.

Sharon Grace was a devoted mother who went everywhere with her two youngest daughters, culminating in a fatal journey to Kaats Strand where she drowned her girls before killing herself in a final, tragic act.

Last night her distraught family and friends were preparing to lay the 29-year-old to rest, side by side for eternity with her little girls in the tiny parish graveyard, less than a mile from their Wexford home.

Sharon had been married to Barry Grace, a base operator with a cab company in Wexford for five years, but had been separated in the last 12 months.

Barry Grace was the father of the dead girls, Michaela, 4½, and Abbi, three, and Sharon Grace also had an 11-year-old daughter, Amy, from a previous relationship.

The couple had been involved in a custody battle over the dead girls.

A relative had contacted social services in recent weeks because she had been concerned about Sharon’s state of health.

The exact course of events that led to the tragedy is still not fully clear.

Michaela had been in a crèche for a short while, in an attempt to prepare her for school next September. But the bright, quiet little girl never settled.

Her mum chose instead to be their full-time carer, playing with her and her three-year-old sister, Abbi, in the large garden at the rear of their bungalow at the edge of Wexford town.

They’d go on long walks most days, neighbours said, particularly while their half-sister, 11-year-old Amy, was in school just over the road.

Yesterday, neighbours kept their small children indoors. A three-quarter-full bag of coal stood at the front door of the bleak, grey-painted, council-owned bungalow at Pike View, overlooking Barntown.

A white Hiace van was parked on the roadway outside the second last home on the quiet cul-de-sac. The grass had been freshly cut and the hedge needed trimming.

Neighbours could only remember how the now cold and abandoned home had once been such a happy place.

But mystery still surrounds their final moments. It’s a drowning tragedy which has left the tiny community of Barntown numbed and stunned. They will never understand just what happened, or why.

“She was quiet, very quiet. A small woman. She was always with the two young kids. She brought them everywhere. She spent a lot of time with her sister, Lillian, too. Lillian also has a daughter, Amber. She’s the same age as Amy. The 11-year-old is with her now,” a neighbour said.

“Its absolutely terrible. You don’t make a decision like that lightly. She and her husband were not together anymore. But they’d bring the little ones out quite a lot. They had many meals together just down the road in Mother Hubbards.”

And staff at Mother Hubbards said the family were frequent diners. “Sharon would come in here a lot with the girls, sometimes with her husband, too.

The little girls were very well behaved. They were lovely. They might come in once or twice a week.”

Hailstone rained down on the abandoned boats on an eerie Kaats Strand. And it whipped against the plastic covering on the three small bouquets of flowers placed on a wall close to where Sharon Grace’s small handbag was found.

A fourth bouquet on the wet sand featured bright red carnations. “I didn’t know them. But I felt compelled to come down here and say a prayer for them. How could anyone be driven to this? It’s a sad reflection on our society and the way we care for people.

“My two children are around their age. I think mothers everywhere will be touched by this tragedy. I was only surprised that there weren’t more flowers down there,” a mother-of-two from the town said.

Yards from where the family perished, a fisherman was at work sanding and patching up a small punt which will be used to fish for bass in about a month’s time.

“Normally there would be eight or nine of us here every Saturday and Sunday morning. But we were at a party late on Saturday night and only one of the lads made it down here on Sunday morning.

“He was one of those who found the bodies. Fishermen here are pretty hardened to tragedy, unfortunately. Other people who go off the bridge usually wash in here. Where this family went in, the slope is gradual for about 12 foot. Then there’s a sheer drop.”

Others walked along the 200-yard stretch leading to the death scene, praying for the repose of their souls. Though it was cold on the strand overlooking Wexford town’s quays, there was a particular chill in the air there yesterday morning.

The first 100 yards the family took on their final journey towards the water’s edge is gravel and large pools of water sit among the short grass in a mucky road leading to where the family perished.

“I can only imagine what must have been in this woman’s head as she walked down here with her two children on Saturday night,” one neighbour said as he walked his two black dogs on the shoreline.

“I walk here every single morning. But I didn’t come down here Sunday morning because it was such a rotten morning. God help this family and those they have left behind. May they rest in peace. They must have gone straight to heaven.”

Gardaí are still anxious to speak to the taxi driver who picked them up in a large, wheelchair-accessible taxi and dropped them into Wexford town some time around 6pm on Saturday evening.

The mother and two little girls were seen hand-in-hand at Ferrybank, on the opposite side of the long, open bridge in Wexford around 8pm on Saturday.

They were heading towards Kaats Strand, where their bodies were found face down in the River Slaney on Sunday morning.

Her surviving daughter, 11 year-old Amy, is being comforted by her aunt, Lillian Reddy.

Her grandmother, Rose, is very unwell and a sufferer from MS.

Neither she nor her husband, Eddie Reddy, would comment on the tragedy yesterday and appealed for privacy.