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PA Media<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nWarning: This story contains distressing details<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The father of a 12-year-old boy killed in the Omagh bomb says his family were “woefully let down” by a poor police investigation.<\/p>\n Victor Barker told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry that his son James’s life had been taken away from him in the most “evil and barbaric fashion”. <\/p>\n He said James, who had taken his sister’s place on a school trip to Omagh, was “robbed of his bright and happy future”.<\/p>\n The Real IRA bomb killed 29 people in the County Tyrone town in August 1998, including a woman who was pregnant with twins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Appearing via a remote link, Mr Barker said: “Like so many thousands of others who have lost loved ones in the Troubles, I have some very dark moments.<\/p>\n “But I have done all I can to bring some kind of justice for James and everyone else.<\/p>\n “We have been woefully let down by a very poorly conducted police investigation and, I might add, a chief constable in Sir Ronnie Flanagan who, in my view, fell well short of the mark.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The public inquiry, being held at the Strule Arts Centre in Omagh, has been hearing personal statements from those affected by the bombing.<\/p>\n Mr Barker told the inquiry that James had grown up in England, but his maternal grandparents moving to Buncrana in County Donegal made his wife want to move back to Ireland.<\/p>\n Mr Barker, who stayed in England, said his son loved living there despite missing him.<\/p>\n Mr Barker, who was in Donegal in August 1998, said his daughter was feeling unwell so James asked if he could take her place on a trip to Omagh with Spanish exchange students<\/p>\n “This was the last time I saw my son alive,” he said.<\/p>\n “As he left the house that morning he had a life full of possibilities in front of him.<\/p>\n “Little did I know that the life he had built and my wife’s dream of a better life for the children was about to be torn apart forever.”<\/p>\n He added that he did not believe his daughter has ever recovered from the guilt that her brother James replaced her.<\/p>\n Mr Barker also told the inquiry how he picked up a copy of a newspaper the next day where there was a picture of James on the front page.<\/p>\n “He was on a stretcher. I recall saying to my friends, ‘look what they’ve done to my lovely boy’,” he said.<\/p>\n “I simply broke down.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Earlier on Monday, a firefighter who attended the scene of the Omagh bomb likened its aftermath to an image from the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n Paddy Quinn is a current commander for the Northern Ireland Fire Service in the Omagh district.<\/p>\n Mr Quinn, an on-call officer at the time of the bombing, heard the explosion while working at his carpet shop and was the first to arrive at the fire station.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mr Quinn said none of the firefighters were anxious as there was no mention of casualties and they assumed the area had been cleared.<\/p>\n He was on the first fire engine to go to Market Street and arrived at a scene of “total chaos, devastation, carnage”.<\/p>\n Referring to a famous photograph from the Vietnam War, he said: “There was a cloud of dust and there was a young girl running across the road terrified, and that’s just the image I have of people from Omagh.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mr Quinn described the look of “disbelief” on his colleagues’ faces.<\/p>\n He said they were local firefighters working in their home town, who were worried their own family members had been caught up in the bomb.<\/p>\n “They were asking where is my wife, my son, my daughter?” he said.<\/p>\n “But they continued to do the job they were called to do and that was help others and search for others.”<\/p>\n He recalled helping an injured woman on to an Ulsterbus and the floor of the bus was red with blood rather than blue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Paramedic Richard Quigley travelled to the scene from Altnagelvin Hospital.<\/p>\n When he arrived he said it was “oddly quiet” as patients had already been moved to hospital.<\/p>\n He remembered the smell of beer flowing down the street from the remains of a bar opposite the bomb site.<\/p>\n He said it was the first explosion he had attended and he was involved in recovering bodies which had been moved into shops and an alleyway.<\/p>\n “We had used all the bags we had,” he said, and had to source more from the fire service and military.<\/p>\n The bags were then placed on to stretchers.<\/p>\n “I physically checked the body bags to see if I could identify which end was the head or legs,” he said.<\/p>\n “What shocked me was not being able to clearly identify either the head or the feet of the patients.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The remains were then transported to a temporary morgue at a nearby Army camp.<\/p>\n Mr Quigley said: “I recall seeing the number of body bags laid out and each had its own area, all in rows with a chair at the end.<\/p>\n “The size of the gym and the number of the body bags on the floor was something that should only have been seen in a movie.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maeve O’Brien was 13-years-old and was shopping with her younger sister and grandmother.<\/p>\n In a statement read to the inquiry, she said her life was divided into periods before and after the bomb. <\/p>\n “It was the end of childhood,” she said.<\/p>\n “Often I would wonder why I survived the bomb and so many others died.”<\/p>\n Maeve’s younger sister Dervlagh, who was eight, described how her ability to live life had been “uprooted” by the bombing<\/p>\n “Sirens, fire alarms, emergency vehicles in any scenario evoke an extreme panic attack from me.” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Damien Murphy had gone into town to send emails at the library.<\/p>\n In a statement that was read out, he described the screams and smells as overwhelming.<\/p>\n “I first saw people come past me with lots of bleeding, I retrieved some paper towels, telling people to put pressure on the wound,” he said.<\/p>\n He added that he met three young Spanish girls who “were bleeding all over”.<\/p>\n “My immediate thought was to get people out of here,” he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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Barker family<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/b5c9\/live\/b3a6ff10-ed2a-11ef-b008-3d63fe428927.jpg.webp\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n‘Where is my wife?’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n‘The end of childhood’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
What was the Omagh bomb?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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