Baltimore: Closure for family as body recovered from sea
The 20-year-old student was recovered about 200m from where he was last seen alive by his sister Charlotte as a family walking trip, last week, turned to tragedy.
His body was located on the seabed in 24m of water, partially covered by sand and seaweed.
“It would have been difficult enough to see,” naval diver Tony O’Regan said.
A flotilla of boats brought the body to shore and a procession of around 100 divers and other volunteers formed a guard of honour as the hearse left Bull Point pier.
The body was removed to Cork University Hospital for a postmortem.
Finding the body brought to a close 10 days of agony for the Davis and Ryan families, following the deaths of Barry’s father Barry Ryan Sr, 51, and Barry Jr’s girlfriend Niamh O’Connor, 21, from Glanmire, who died on June 30 after Niamh was dragged out to sea and both Barry Sr and Barry Jr had jumped in to save her.
Eamon Barry of West Cork Underwater Search and Rescue (WCUSR) had co-ordinated the search effort on shore from early morning alongside colleague John Kearney who had made the call earlier this week for experienced divers to assist the recovery operation.
Mr Barry said: “I’m just very happy for the family; the mother was here last night and the one thing she said she wanted was closure. We got that today and there is a massive group of people to thank for that.”
The discovery had been made at lunchtime, just before the search was about to be called off due to deteriorating conditions. Three dive teams remained in the water when the discovery was made at 1pm.
John Chambers was among a team of five with Atlantic Divers in Cork City scouring the sea bed at Eastern Hole bay when he spotted the body. Visibility was between three and four metres with a slight surface swell.
“We were going to keep going until we ran all the way into the cove,” he said.
Mr Chambers arrived on Wednesday with a team of nine volunteer divers who completed six dives over the past three days.
“It’s a sense of closure for the family and I hope it gives them that. These guys are all trained divers and it’s something they can use to help other people when they can,” he said.
Naval divers Tony O’Regan and Gareth Smith assisted in the recovery following a call from John Kearney.
“There’s a lot of kelp and heavy rocks and a lot of weed, the body was slightly covered in weed and some sand had washed in around it. It would have been difficult enough to see,” Mr O’Regan said. “We were into day 10 here almost and people had begun almost to lose hope but thankfully perseverance paid off. The local community spirit has been phenomenal here.”
The young man’s remains will repose at the Sacred Heart Church, Rath, tomorrow from 5pm to 7pm and be buried in Baltimore on Monday.
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