Republican News · Thursday 7 March 2002

Avoidable tragedy

Picture the scene. It is close to 4am on a Monday morning and it the kind of night you wouldn't throw a dog out in.

A wee lad is in the town centre. He is 15 but would pass for 12, with braces on his teeth. He has no jacket - only a thin shirt and a T-shirt to insulate him from a Donegal winter's night.

Two of Donegal's finest see him wandering towards him. They ask him his name and his date of birth - so they know he is a child, unaccompained at that time of the morning. What do they do?

They tell him to move on.

A few hours later, his mother realises that her wee boy didn't make it home on the bus when he should have. For the next nine days, the Gardaí in Donegal had the good hearted folk of the county trudging through bogs and searching forest as far as the border.

After complaceny comes cover up. The two Gardaí who were probably the last people to speak to this child alive claimed that he was OK. His pals said that he was drunk. Why would they lie?

So, in all probability, the Gardaí spoke to a drunk child with no jacket at four in the morning in Donegal town two weeks ago last Sunday.

Nine days later, at a particularly low tide, his body was spotted in the channel just a few hundred yards off the pier, where a lad answering his description was seen running soon after meeting the two Gardaí.

Brendan's uncle, perhaps speaking for the entire grieving family, asked what kind of a police officer would have taken that lack of action in those circumstances?

The people of the county showed that they are made of the right stuff. For the duration of the search, the John Boscoe centre in the town drummed to the beat of hundreds of pairs of boots coming and going. The tea, soup and sandwiches were in constant supply. A local shopkeeper came into the centre and dished out gloves and socks for soaked, exhausted people - many of them from Brendan's home town of Castlederg.

The Gardai on duty - we use that term loosely - would have known that they had power under Section 12 of the 1991 Child Care Act to take Brendan into care and remove him to a place of safety - like his house. They could have phoned his parents and a car would have been sent for him.

Had they done that, the Rushe family would still have their son. Brendan was a Tyrone boy who died in tragic circumstances in Donegal. The people of both counties, in terms of a policing service, deserve better.