A mother’s nightmare

TERESA KEANE, the mother of five-year-old Marie Keane-Connolly, was unable to hold back the tears when she knelt and placed flowers at the scene where her daughter had died in a fire just hours before.

Ms Keane is understood to have given birth to twin girls in Sligo General Hospital days before the incident. It is believed she enjoyed a visit from Marie and her two sisters hours before the blaze at their home in Boyle, Co Roscommon, yesterday.

Gardaí said they were treating the house fire as suspicious. The house at Termon Road was sealed off as crime scene examiners carried out forensic checks after the fire, which broke out between 2.30am and 3am.

Marie’s body was found in an upstairs bedroom of the two-storey terraced house after her father, Richard Connolly Jr, and two other children, Lauren, 6, and Naomi, 8, escaped.

He jumped from an upstairs window with two of his daughters but was unable to rescue Marie. He was taken to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin with back injuries and a punctured lung.

The two girls were treated for smoke inhalation and shock at Sligo General Hospital.

Neighbours Frances Woods and Micheál Rushe were shocked.

“I just can’t believe it, it’s desperate. It’s like something you would see somewhere else on TV, but when it happens on your own doorstep it’s shocking,” said Ms Woods.

John McLoughlin, principal of Scoil na nAingeal Naofa, which Marie attended, said: “She was a lovely little girl, she was so pleasant, everyone knew her. She was angelic — she had lovely big brown eyes and she was very chatty and friendly.”