Hit-and-run pictures ‘intensified pain and loss’

GRAPHIC media pictures taken at the scene of the hit-and-run that claimed the lives of two Irish women on a visit to Rome intensified the pain and loss of both families, mourners heard yesterday.

Canon Willie Fitzmaurice, an uncle of one of the two victims — Elizabeth Gubbins, 27, from Lisnagry — addressed a packed congregation at Castleconnell Parish Church.

“Their going looked like a disaster — their leaving us like annihilation,” he said. While Elizabeth and Mary were the innocent victims of “wayward irresponsibility”, he said the family acknowledged the expressions of condolence offered by the father of the driver.