Inquiry hears more evidence from those injured in 1998 explosion

The hearings at the Omagh Bomb Inquiry today focused on the stories of survival experienced by some of those who were in the town on August 15,1998.

Among them was Katrine Gault who at the time was working in a coffee shop at the corner of Market Street and Dublin Road.

She remembered how the shop was busy on that Saturday afternoon, and she was aware of people standing outside.

She had seen local traffic warden, Rosemary Ingram, directing traffic moments before the explosion.

“As I turned around to head back to the till, the bomb exploded,” she said.

“The noise from the explosion was so loud that I remember sticking my fingers in my ears. I don’t know if I was knocked to the ground, but I knew I had glass lodged all over my body.”

Caroline Taggart recalled everyone being in good form that day in Omagh.

She remembered leaning against the Vauxhall Cavalier car for some time when one of her friends said that she needed nail polish as they were all going out that night.

“On the way to the shop to buy that and when we were about 10 metres from the car, I saw my neighbour Avril Monaghan, and her daughter. We spoke a few words as she was just coming from the shop,” she said.

“Five seconds latter, just as I had my foot at the door of the shop entrance, the bomb went off.

“The noise, the smoke, the screams, the glass, the flames. I thought another bomb was going to go off. I was on the floor with my clothes in ribbons, no shoes. I got up. I knew I had to get out or to try to get out.”

Jamie McGlinn was in Omagh that day with his girlfriend when they were both blown off their feet by the explosion.

He suffered serious shrapnel injuries and was taken to hospital in a bus, before being transferred to the South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon.

“The bus wasn’t a very nice place to be. The journey was very, very slow. It was not nice. It’s a memory that I can still see vividly in black and white.

“There was a little kid who was on the bus and crying. A person came along and tried to calm him down.

“I looked away and then back and the person was gone. My only kind of description was that it was an angel that just needed to be there for the kids in that particular moment to calm them down.”