Four Buncrana crash victims to be buried today

Four more victims of Ireland’s worst road accident will be buried today.

Funerals will be held in Buncrana and Clonmany, Co Donegal, as the community struggles to deal with the deaths of eight people.

Paul Doherty, 19, from Ballyliffin; Ciaran Sweeney, 19, from Ballyliffin; Eamonn McDaid, from Ballymagan, and Damien McLaughlin, 21, from Umricam, Buncrana, are the latest to be interred.

Driver Sean Kelly’s Volkswagen Passat was packed with seven passengers when it clipped a Renault Megane. The Passat and a Toyota Corolla were then in a head-on collision a little further down the road between Clonmany and Buncrana. Mr Kelly is battling for life in hospital and the rest of the passengers are dead.

The driver of the Corolla, Hugh Friel, 66, was coming the other way returning from a successful night of bingo in Buncrana when he was killed almost instantly.

A telegraph pole was sheared in two by the collision and the cars landed in the ditch.

Mr Friel’s funeral was one of three held yesterday. Mourners heard from local priest Fr Fintan Diggin who said the victim would not have wanted the circumstances surrounding his death to heap any more pain or suffering or grief on anybody.

Patrick “PJ” McLaughlin and Mark McLaughlin, both aged 21, were also buried after funeral masses yesterday.