Sharon and two girls laid to rest

“THREE of the brightest lights in our family went out on Christmas morning,” said the brother of Sharon Whelan yesterday, the woman who was found dead with her two daughters after a house fire.

“These lights went out and our family’s lives will never be the same again,” said Davey Whelan at the funeral of his sister Sharon, 30, and her two daughters Zsara, 7, and Nadia, 2, in Windgap, Co Kilkenny.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in the tiny parish church to pay their final respects to the two little girls who perished in the fire and their “wonderful mother” who gardaí now believe may have been strangled before the house was set alight.