Junior Cert student killed in tractor fall to be laid to rest

A small community is united in mourning as it prepares to bury a sports-loving teenager who died in a weekend farming tragedy in North Cork.

Micheál ‘Haulie’ Murphy’s passions also extended to farm machinery, and it was from a tractor that he fell and received serious injuries around teatime on Friday.

He was airlifted from the scene of the accident near Glenville to Cork University Hospital, but was later pronounced dead.

“So sad and hard to believe he died doing something he loved, RIP Haulie,” one teenager from Fermoy wrote on Twitter.

Micheál was a student at St Colman’s College in the town and should have been starting classes in the coming days ahead of his Junior Certificate next June.

Glanworth GAA Club, where Micheál played football and hurling, was in shock and all its games were postponed at the weekend as a mark of respect.

“It’s very sad. He was well-known and loved in the community. The whole village is numbed and our sympathies go to his family,” said the club’s county board delegate and local county councillor Frank O’Flynn.

“He had a smile to light up a room; my kids looked up to him — a nice guy,” said one parent on the club’s Facebook page, under a photo of Haulie and his team-mates.

He is mourned by heartbroken parents Patrick and Frances, and his brother Dean. Micheál was waked at the family home yesterday and his funeral Mass takes place at 2pm today in Glanworth Church.

On his Facebook page, his love of machinery is apparent, with one of the website’s groups he had joined being All Things Machinery, where members share images and videos of tractors and machinery. Dozens of people joined a tribute page on Facebook.

“R.I.P haulie bud, never met a nicer youngfella than you, you were loved by everyone, sleep tight,” wrote Julieann Woods.

Meanwhile, gardaí in Donegal have launched an investigation to seek a hit- and-run driver.

One clue gardaí have is pieces of the car which struck the victim, who was found dead on a narrow country road outside Bundoran by his wife at 5.10am yesterday.

He was named locally as 48-year-old Alan McSherry, a maintenance man known as “Handy Al”, who was a keen surfer and had moved to Ireland to follow the sport he loved so much.

He was walking from a night out in Bundoran to his home in Boyannagh, Co Leitrim — a distance of about 3km — when he was hit and fatally injured.

Gardaí said the collision could have occurred any time after 3.30am.

It followed an exchange of missed telephone calls between the victim and his wife, Jo.

A family friend said she awoke and saw missed calls and finally realised her husband was trying to contact her to tell her he could not get a taxi home.

She then phoned him and, failing to get an answer, drove towards Bundoran to meet him. She found his body on the roadside about 1km from their home.

Mr McSherry and his wife had no children and were from the Birkenhead area of England. They arrived in Bundoran 15 years ago in a camper van and never left.

They both loved surfing and Jo got work with the Donegal Adventure Centre, while Alan did maintenance work around the town, mainly at the Bridge Bar, where he was drinking on Saturday until about 10pm, before moving on elsewhere.

Gardaí said they found car remains at the scene of the tragedy, but did not indicate which parts of the car were found or what type of car it was.

“My appeal is for the driver that hit this man to make contact with gardaí at Ballyshannon Garda Station on 071 9858 530 or the Garda Confidential telephone,” said Garda traffic chief in Donegal, Inspector Michael Harrison. “Make contact and tell us what you saw.”