A STRABANE priest has spoken of the devastation being suffered by the family of a 17-year-old boy who has drowned in a water-filled quarry.
Rhys Jack, from the Co Tyrone town, got into trouble on the water in the Backtown area on Monday.
His friends desperately tried to save him but could not.
Emergency services mounted a search on Monday evening, but the body was not found until yesterday.
It is understood that Rhys – along with three friends – had been on the water on a makeshift raft which was a large gymnasium-style mat.
One of the boys who had been on the water with Rhys spoke last night of the utter shock and sense of unreality felt by all the young people who knew the teenager.
Strabane Parish Priest Father Michael Doherty has been comforting the Jack family. He said they are utterly devastated.
The teenager is understood to be the third member of his extended family to have drowned.
Fr Doherty said that Rhys’s parents identified their son’s body at the quarry shortly after it was recovered by search teams.
He said they were feeling deep sadness but an element of relief that his body had been recovered.
“They knew over the past day, or from about eight o’clock on Monday that although they would have liked to have thought there was a chance he would be still alive, they knew that he was gone and their hope was that the body would be found sooner rather than later,” he said.
Rhys’s mother Elaine lost her brother Eddie McGarrigle in a drowning incident in the 1970s..
Little Eddie was just five-years-old when he went missing, feared drowned in March 1972.
His body has never been found and there is a plaque in his memory on the waterwall along the River Mourne at Melvin.
Fr Doherty explained that the corpse of Elaine Jack’s young brother had never been found, so they were relieved that Rhys’s body had been recovered.
He also said it was his understanding that Rhys’s father’s uncle had drowned in the River Finn a number of years ago.
A PSNI spokeswoman yesterday said: “Following a search of a quarry at Strahan’s Road area of Blacktown in Strabane, the body of a young man has been recovered. The young man has been named as Rhys Jack. He was 17 years old and from the Strabane area. His body was recovered from the quarry by divers assisted by specially-trained police search dogs and Foyle Search and Rescue.”
Before the teenager’s body was recovered, his uncle Darren McGarrigle said the family were “totally devastated”.
“He is just a wee one. It shouldn’t happen. The whole family is just absolutely in shock,” he told the BBC.
Mr McGarrigle described his nephew as a “loveable rogue”.
“He was a typical teenager,” he said. ”He had his wee cheeky moments, but he was very kind and funny. He was a good lad.”
Police, firefighters and volunteer divers were involved in the search.
About 150 young people gathered at the scene after people in the area heard what happened and there was a sombre silence as they watched the search for their friend Rhys.
The funeral is expected to take place later this week, but last night arrangements had not yet been finalised.
The disused quarry at Backtown has been described by the chairman of Strabane District Council as “a magnet” for young people.
Councillor Brian McMahon extended his deepest sympathy to the family of the teenager.
“As the hours went by on Monday night a sense of sad resignation set in and the sense of shock and disbelief was replaced by palpable sense of sorrow,” he said.
This is the third drowning tragedy in the Strabane area in the past three years.
Exactly three years ago this week, 21-year-old local chef Dale Alexander drowned while swimming during a heat wave in the River Mourne at Sion Mills.
Last May, 22-year-old Lifford man David Colhoun drowned in the River Mourne after fleeing from police in Strabane. His family believe that he had been attempting to swim across to Lifford. His body was only recovered in March this year after a painstaking 10-month search.