Community united in grief as two young crash victims laid to rest

THE framed photographs at the altar were of happier times.

As best friends, Stephanie McCauley, 15, and Vanessa Byrne, 13, had been altar servers in Avoca, Co Wicklow and played camogie with the local club. Yesterday, the two teenagers were buried together.

In one of the biggest funerals held in the village, hundreds of mourners stood silently behind the two black hearses as they stopped for a brief moment at the spot where the girls were killed.

The two pals had been walking to the shop for sweets on Saturday when they were crushed against a wall by a trailer and tractor loaded with bales of hay.

During yesterdays’ Requiem Mass in the parish church and again as the coffins were laid to rest in the graveyard a mile outside the village, many locals were moved to tears.

The parents of the two teenage friends, Tom and Rosie McCaughey, Kilmagig Lower, and Anthony and Maureen Byrne, Station Road clung tightly to each other for comfortStephanie had sat her junior certificate exams in St Mary’s College, Arklow, last month.

Vanessa had started secondary school in Avondale Community College, Rathdrum, last September.

Sean Walsh, principal of Avondale Community College, who suffered a similar tragedy 18-years-ago when his son and daughter were killed in a road accident told the congregation:

‘There is no answer to the question why this accident happened. Nobody set out to do it.

“The driver of the tractor had gone around that corner several times, the girls had crossed the street several times before and nothing ever happened.

The saying ‘God only knows’ is as relevant today as it ever was,” he said.