Fighting for the truth…

Matthew McCallan was 15-years-old when he was found frozen to death in a ditch outside Fintona two years ago on December 5, 2022.

As of yet, his mother Frances Currie still has no indication when there will be an inquest into the circumstances surrounding her teenage son’s death, which she believes involved at least one crime.

Darryl Thompson was killed after exiting a car carrying a driver and several other passengers on the M1 motorway in November 2018.

His mother Edwina Thompson-Clarke, who recently found out that an inquest into Darryl’s death will take place in Belfast in February 2025, believes the collision that killed her son was preceded by a fight that broke out in the car and continued on the side of the motorway.

Six years after Darryl’s death, Edwina still doesn’t know what really happened in the moments that led to his death. Both Edwina and Frances have been denied legal aid to help cover the costs required to secure barrister and solicitor support during the respective inquests (on the basis that there was ‘insufficient public interest’).

Edwina recently received a legal bill of over £10,000, prompting her to set up a GoFundMe page in a reluctant appeal for public support.

Frances had to give up her work as a result of mental health problems that rapidly developed in the aftermath of Matthew’s death, which she says has left her ‘a broken woman’.

“I have nothing now and that’s the honest truth,” she said. “Since Matthew’s death, the only things I have gained are anxiety, depression and more anger than you could believe.

“I am not the same person anymore, which is sad but true. I think differently.

“I just go around-and-around in circles. The last thing I need is a big legal bill slapped on top of everything else. It would just mean additional stress and it seems completely unfair that the courts should expect a grieving mother to pay to find out what happened to her son.

“It doesn’t seem at all right to me,” said Frances.

Edwina described the ‘unbearable’ emotional toll that losing her son has taken on her, contrasting it with the pain she experienced after losing Darryl’s father Tony and her brother within just a few years.

“Darryl’s daddy was crushed under 17 tonnes of sand and the two back wheels of a lorry.

“When my brother was killed two years later, he was severed at the waist. But when Darryl died it was a different level entirely. It was all that mattered. The truth is that I wasn’t even able to be a mother to my other son Jack for a few years after Darryl’s death,” said Edwina.

It is in this context which the two women explain the potentially catastrophic impact the pressure of a hefty legal bill could have on them.

In Edwina’s words, “Losing a child leaves you so fragile that it is impossible to tell just how much extra weight it might take to crush you.”

In response to questions posed by this newspaper, a spokesperson for Coroners Service for Northern Ireland said, “The Coroner has no control over the provision of legal aid and cannot comment on why an application for legal aid may have been refused.The purpose of an inquest is solely to ascertain who the deceased was, and how, when and where the deceased came by his death. There is an ongoing coronial investigation into the deaths of both Darryl Thompson and Matthew McCallan. The conclusion of the PSNI investigation in the death of Darryl Thompson has allowed that inquest to be progressed and it is now listed for hearing early next year.”

In the following two pages, we discuss in detail how the two women have coped with their sons’ deaths.

As well as speaking as frankly as is legally permissible about the circumstances surrounding their children’s deaths and the various mistakes, blunders and acts of wrongdoing they believe were committed in connection with the tragedies, the two women also fondly remember the people their boys were, recall their never-to-be-realised hopes and dreams, and discuss whether they believe they will see them again.

Continued on Pages 8/9