Shop worker fatally injured in Omagh bomb apologised to husband as she lay dying

A “one in a million” mother fatally injured in the Omagh bomb apologised to her husband moments before she died, a public inquiry has heard.

Geraldine Breslin’s son Gareth McCrystal, speaking publicly about her death for the first time, told the inquiry into the 1998 attack that the shop worker was “authentic, genuine, kind and loved”.

Mr McCrystal recalled the horrific moment his stepfather Mark told him his 43-year-old mother, whom he always believed to be “immortal”, had succumbed in hospital to the severe injuries she suffered in the Real IRA bombing.

Then 15, the family had decided it was best that Mr McCrystal did not see his mother in the hours after the bombing as medics battled to save her life.

When her coffin was brought back to the family home in Omagh for a wake it was closed due to the extent of the injuries.

Mr McCrystal, now 42, told inquiry chairman Lord Turnbull that at the time it was “torture” not being able to see his mother.

But he said he has since made peace with the fact, as his final memory of her is as she was before the atrocity.

Mr McCrystal described their relationship as “fantastic”.

“I adored her,” he said.

“I loved her unconditionally, and she loved me unconditionally. I worshipped her.

“We were very, very close. I was her only child and she was very protective of me, as any mother is with any child.

“We had a wonderful relationship. She was amazing. She was one in a million.

“She was an absolute class act my mother.”

Mr McCrystal added: “What was done to her was absolutely despicable and appalling.

“My mother was treated by the terrorists like she was rubbish, like she was total garbage, and I’d no desire to see my mother battered and bloodied and bruised.

“But my father, he did get comfort out of it. He saw her and, by all accounts, he told me that she – again, this is typical of the sort of person that my mother was – that she apologised when she was lying on the stretcher, moments from death.

“She apologised to my father for being caught up in this incident. She just felt sorry. She apologised that she was even there. She apologised to my father, and God only knows what he thought of that.”

Ms Breslin had been working as a shop assistant at a local drapery business in Omagh on the day of the attack.

She came home for lunch earlier in the day and Mr McCrystal told the inquiry how he had run upstairs to play a video game after eating and the last words he spoke to his mother were calling downstairs to her as she left to go back to work.

Mr McCrystal also recalled the family’s “suffocating and horrible experience” of living out their grief under the microscope of the intense media scrutiny that was focused on the Co Tyrone town in the aftermath of the bombing.

His mother had raised him, her only child, as a single parent until she met her future husband Mark Breslin in 1993. The couple married in 1995.

Mr McCrystal said his stepfather had never been able to find closure for what happened on August 15 1998.

“He was very happy prior to August 1998, very excited for the future he and my mother were going to have, and then the bomb ruined everything,” he said.

“And he hasn’t really moved on. He’s tried his best. He’s a very, very good, decent man who didn’t – well, nobody deserved this – but he certainly didn’t deserve this to be visited on him. But it’s terrible really to see him.”

Twenty-nine people, including a woman pregnant with twins, died in the dissident republican bomb attack carried out four months after the signing of Northern Ireland’s historic Good Friday peace accord.

Mr McCrystal reflected on his own struggles in the years after the bombing.

He moved to Birmingham to study in an effort to get away from Omagh and the memories of the bombing, but living in England he would go on to develop what he described as a severe drink problem.

Mr McCrystal told the inquiry how he has since turned his life around and has been sober for more than 13 years.

“I do have a wonderful life,” he said.

“I am married and I have three young children. We have a wonderful marriage, and my kids are amazing and we have a wonderful home and I have a good career.

“I believe I have turned my life around. I’m definitely not the angry, bitter person I was 15 or 20 years ago. I think I am a changed man and I have a lot more than most. I think I am lucky.”

But Mr McCrystal said not one day goes by when he does not think about his mother.

“Everything I’ve achieved is incredibly bittersweet, because my mother’s not here to witness it,” he said.

“I know she would have got a real thrill out of becoming a grandmother, meeting my wife.

“Everything I achieve, and I’m proud of my achievements, but it is with a sense of regret. I wish she was here. I wish she was here to see this.”

Mr McCrystal added: “It’s my privilege to be her son. I feel incredibly lucky that we had 15 years together.

“I know we should have had many, many more years together.

“I feel blessed that we knew each other and we had a wonderful relationship. I’m very honoured and proud to be her son.”