Classmates grieve for Aoife after fatal accident

SCHOOL pals of Aoife Downey have been comforting each other ahead of this evening’s removal for the 15-year-old killed in the tragic weekend sledding accident.

Aoife’s third-year classmates arrived to share their grief at Christ King secondary school in Douglas yesterday morning. About 170 girls are preparing for the Junior Certificate at the Cork school next June, but their minds were on nothing but the loss of their friend as they gathered in the school library.

As they did, Aoife’s 14-year-old friend Chelsea Noonan and one of two teenage brothers also injured in the Saturday afternoon tragedy were recovering at Cork University Hospital, where their condition had improved to stable yesterday. The four were on a makeshift sled which crashed into a tree on snow-covered slopes at Frankfield Golf Club on the southside of Cork, causing fatal head injuries to 15-year-old Aoife.

The National Educational Psychological Service has made staff available to help students at Christ King to try and come to terms with the tragedy and to advise teachers on ways to help the girls’ welfare in the coming weeks and months.

Chelsea Noonan, who was seriously injured, is a second year student at the school and her classmates were also thinking of her and wishing her a speedy recovery.

The school is also attended by one of Aoife’s two younger sisters Caoimhe who is in first year and her other sister Éadaoin is a primary school pupil. Their father Seán is a teacher at Scoil Mhuire gan Smál in Blarney.

Aoife’s sporting prowess was the subject of many tributes over the weekend, as friends and mentors recalled her talents in camogie, football and soccer. Her achievements also rubbed off on her classmates, with much talk at the school of the positive influence she had on her peers.

Since news of the tragedy emerged on Saturday evening, messages of sadness and condolences were placed on social networking sites, with hundreds signing up to Facebook pages in Aoife’s memory. Her name became one of the biggest-mentioned words on Twitter in Ireland and Britain as word spread of her being a fan of X Factor boyband One Direction.

“Its so sad & awful. Only happened up the road from me, its weird. It should never have happened, it was simple fun: (Rip?,” wrote one girl on Twitter.

Another posted: “Im gonna miss you so much : (Your were taken away from us way too young !! You were such a nice and bubbly girl : (R.I.P Aoife x”

Reception prayers will be said for Aoife at 4.30pm today in the Church of the Incarnation in Frankfield, where her remains will be reposing until 6.30pm, and her funeral Mass takes place tomorrow at 11am.