London funeral for shooting victim

The Irish Times – Saturday, February 18, 2012Melanie McCarthy-McNamara’s boyfriend Christopher Moran leads the mourners at St Dominic’s Priory, London, yesterday. Photograph: Joanne O’Brien

MARK HENNESSY, London Editor

ST DOMINIC’S Priory in Kentish Town in north London had loomed large in the life of Melanie McCarthy-McNamara, the 16-year-old shot dead recently in Tallaght.

Ten years ago, Melanie went to St Dominic’s Priory on Southampton Road in Kentish Town for her First Holy Communion.

She had intended to return there for her marriage within the next year.

Yesterday, however, hundreds returned to the same church for her funeral Mass, following her brutal killing in Tallaght on February 7th when she was shot twice in the head while sitting in the back of an SUV, along with her boyfriend, Christopher Moran.

Everything about the funeral was pink, Melanie’s favourite colour: most of the younger men and boys, some as young as three, in her wider family wore identical shirts in that colour which also featured on the coffin.

In his words, Fr Peter Harries OP acknowledged the inability of many in the congregation to put their thoughts into words following the killing: “It is difficult to know what to say, or what to do. Here, a few years ago, she made her First Communion.

“And here we gather now to pray for her and to offer prayers for those left behind,” he said, adding that “when someone’s life is cut short then our normal way of comforting people seems somehow less than adequate”.

According to some of those who attended the funeral, her remains had been laid out in a favourite pink tracksuit, along with white running shoes, and the engagement ring placed on her finger by her boyfriend after her death.

A friend, Sammy Jo, read the words of tribute from the dead girl’s father:

“The love I have for you is the greatest love of all. I was the proudest man on the Earth. Don’t worry about Mummy and the children. You’re in safe hands. I will never forget you. Love Shakey.”

Her coffin was carried from the church to the words of the Sarah McLaughlin song,
In The Arms of an Angel , while members of her family, including her grandmother, Frances – who had to leave briefly earlier in the ceremony because of illness – walked behind.

Outside the church, large numbers of bouquets, mostly in pink, were laid on a flat-bed truck, which carried an erect display which read, “Our Barbie Doll”, while another in the shape of a Blackberry mobile phone was laid alongside.

Her coffin was borne in a white carriage pulled by four white horses, each of which had pink feathers in their manes, adorned by several wreaths including ones that read “Angel” and “Melanie”.

Six Daimler cars, including one in pink, carried members of the family, who have lived for some years in the Queen’s Crescent district near by, to Highgate Cemetery for the burial, escorted by a police motorcycle outrider.

A photographer from the local
Camden Journal was asked by the family to take pictures of the coffin inside the church before the ceremony, but other members of the media received some verbal abuse from a few of those who attended the funeral.

Some expressed unhappiness at press coverage which suggested that the teenager had been the victim of a gangland killing that had gone wrong: “You’re all telling lies,” said one relative of the dead girl angrily.

Tempers are high among Travellers following the killing. In his sermon, Fr Harries acknowledged the sense of “loss, pain and bewilderment” that exists among the Traveller community, but he urged all to denounce violence, which is, he said, “not the Christian way”.

Gardaí were last night continuing to question two males in relation to Ms McCarthy-McNamara’s murder. A teenager and a man in his early 20s were detained in Athy, Co Kildare on Thursday following a raid on an apartment in the town.

They can be held at Tallaght Garda station, Dublin, for up to seven days.