‘Few awful minutes left young girl dead’

IT WAS a “few awful minutes” that snuffed out the life of a young mother and raised questions about where society was going.

So said Father Pat Littleton as he presided over the funeral mass of Donna Cleary, the indiscriminate victim of a gun attack less than two weeks ago.

“You will forever remember Sunday, March 5,” said Fr Littleton.

“A few minutes, a few awful minutes, left a young girl of 22 dead, a little boy of two, by the name of Clayton, without a mother, a mother and a father and two brothers with broken hearts, hearts that may never mend...

"This community (has been left) numbed... A whole country asking ‘what’s happening to us’ and ‘where are we going?'”

Donna was fatally injured when a gang of youths fired into a house in Coolock, north Dublin, after they were refused entry to a party there.

Several hundred mourners braved a raw, cold day and packed into St Luke’s Church in Kilmore, to pay their respects to Donna and her family, parents Kathleen and Peter, brothers Glen and Keith, and her son Clayton.

At the same time, the funeral mass of Donna’s suspected killer Dwayne Foster took place in Finglas, north west Dublin. He died in garda custody on March 7.

Fr Littleton said the families of those who had caused the pain were themselves traumatised and pained.

There was no mention yesterday of Donna’s former partner and father of Clayton, Jason Larkin, who is serving a life sentence for murder.

He was taken in handcuffs to see Donna at the funeral home the previous evening.

Fr Littleton said it was different when the violence in the newspapers and on the television comes to our own doorstep.

“In our hearts we wonder ‘where is God’? And, like Jesus in the Gospel, we say, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’.

“We know it is not God’s will that Donna had been snatched at so young an age. There’s a time for everything, but today is the wrong time.”

In a stirring sermon, Fr Littleton urged people to learn, and act, from the tragedy.

“Let her death not be in vain. Let us build communities where we look out for each other, where we respect and cherish each other, where breaking into another person’s home is not acceptable.

“Let us build communities where there is respect for the law of the land and respect for our God, and where violence will be no more, please God.”

Family friends placed personal memories of Donna on her coffin, including a photograph of happier times, of Donna proudly holding her baby boy last Christmas.

Mourners grew emotional as the strains of Westlife’s You Raise Me Up, a personal favourite of Donna’s, filled the church.

As the family followed the coffin out of the church, Donna’s mother clung onto her husband for support.

Peter, himself clearly shattered, looked on as his daughter, the “apple of his eye”, was taken away from him.