Two devastated families and the wider community united in mourning on Friday at the funerals of two teenage friends who died in a car crash in Co Donegal, reports Breaking News.
Alana Harkin and Thomas Gallagher, 18, were part of a group returning from work at Simpson’s Bar and Restaurant in Carndonagh in the early hours of Monday.
What should have been a routine journey home ended in tragedy when the car they were travelling in veered off the road and into a wooded area in Terrawee, Glenelly, at around 12.30pm.
Alana and Thomas died, and another friend, a teenage male, was taken to hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries, reports Breaking News.
The outpouring of grief ahead of the funeral was evident on the Inishowen Peninsula, which has unfortunately become accustomed to such road tragedies.
Many of these close-knit villages and small towns knew both Alana and Thomas and many of them attended both funerals, which took place at different times.
Alana’s first funeral took place at St. Mary’s Church in Bocan, Cooluff, an hour before the funeral, hundreds of mourners lined the streets in front of the church.
Fr. James McGonagle said at the funeral that Alanna had certainly left a mark in her short 18 years on earth.
“If we could see Alana’s life not as a life interrupted but rather as a life completed it might help us to gain strength for the future, because we all do have a future, there is still a life to be lived,” he told the congregation, reports Breaking News.
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