Friends dug desperately in bid to save Niamh

A local man who tried to save a teenage girl trapped under a sand dune in Kerry has described how he and her friends dug desperately with their hands to try to save her.

Niamh McCarthy, 19, from Minane Bridge, Co Cork, died yesterday afternoon, 24 hours after a sand dune collapsed on her on the Back Beach in the Maharees, about 40km from Tralee.

She had been on a life support machine in Kerry General Hospital’s intensive care unit, with her family at her bedside.