Early Christmas present turns to tragedy for classmates
“Just got a placement in Belgium!!! A great start of the day!!” she posted on her Facebook page on Dec 17.
The message conveyed the excitement which she and Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) classmate Sara must have felt at the prospect of six months working in Leuven outside Brussels.
Dace, 22, and 19-year-old Sara Gibadlo were in the second year of their bachelor of business degree in hotel and catering management, and were the only GMIT students at the Leuven Institute for Ireland.
The older girl went to school in Longford, and GMIT said her family is originally from Latvia. Sara’s family came from Poland and she lived in Oranmore, Co Galway.
Other classmates who are on placement around Europe were learning of the news from college authorities yesterday.
Students and management at GMIT said there was deep shock when the news reached the campus in Galway yesterday morning.
“They were very popular students, not only among their classmates, but throughout the whole college. It’s a tragic loss of two bright young students who had great futures ahead of them,” said GMIT Students’ Union president Sam O’Neill.
Cáit Noone, head of GMIT’s college of tourism and arts, said there was a huge sense of loss and an incredibly sombre mood.
She described Dace and Sara as two incredibly talented students with huge futures in the hospitality industry.
“That industry now is at a loss because we’ve lost two really talented young ladies, very hard working, great work ethics, really very, very good students. We couldn’t have asked for more,” she said.
Ms Noone told RTÉ they were excited at the opportunity to go overseas and learn more around their industry, improving their job prospects for when they returned to Ireland and graduated.
“Our condolences are with their families and friends at this really very sad time,” she said.
