‘I go to bed every night hoping I’ll see my Danielle in my dreams’
THE mother of a woman brutally killed in India last year has said that the family will never find closure.
Danielle McLaughlin’s mother, Andrea Brannigan, said she goes to bed every night hoping to see her daughter in her dreams.
Speaking ahead of the trial this Friday of an Indian man accused of raping and murdering the 28-yearold Donegal woman, Ms Brannigan told RTÉ Radio 1’s Seán O’Rourke: ‘My heart wants to believe she’s going to walk through that door.
‘I can’t describe [the] grief, really, it’s never-ending. It’s like a piece of your heart’s been taken out, you’ve an arrow in your heart. It’s constant pain. You’ve the ache that you miss them. You want to hear them, to see them. I go to bed every night hoping that Danielle comes to me in a dream, just to even see her.’
Danielle was last seen celebrating the Holi festival of colours at a holiday resort in Goa on March 13, 2017. Her body was found a day later.
Police later arrested a local man, Vikat Bhaga, 24, who was said to be friends with Danielle and was seen in CCTV footage with the victim.
Ms Brannigan said her daughter messaged her on Facebook every day. In the last communication, Danielle wrote that she was in a safe part of Goa, she was with friends and she was happy.
Tragically, Ms Brannigan continues to message her daughter on Facebook, explaining: ‘It’s difficult to accept that she’s never coming home.’
Danielle was found strangled to death and her face was smashed with a broken beer bottle.
Danielle, who had been friends with Mr Bhaga since 2016, was the eldest of six sisters. Her younger sister Jolene also spoke to RTÉ yesterday ahead of the trial.
‘I miss her all the time,’ Jolene said. ‘There is so much I want to tell her. She used to say that I was her first ever best friend. I did my Leaving Cert, but I couldn’t tell her how I got on. I started travelling, something she always wanted me to do, she just wanted me to see more of the world like she did.’
Danielle’s horrific death was not the first time tragedy had struck the family. In 2002, Ms Brannigan lost a baby at ten weeks to cot death, and her husband died in 2015 from cancer.
Mr Bhaga has a lengthy criminal record, but claims he was actually in love with Danielle and it was three of his friends who killed her in front of him. He alleges police beat him and said he was forced to incriminate himself by putting fingerprints on beer bottles.
‘There is so much I want to tell her’