Barbarism impossible to fathom

IT is heartbreaking to lose a child through accident or illness but for Anastasia Kriegel to be robbed from her family in such barbaric fashion must be unbearable.

Today, like teenage girls the length and breadth of Ireland, she should be enjoying the sunshine and mingling with friends.

She may well have decided to lounge around in the balmy weather in St Catherine’s Park in Dublin’s Lucan, the place she was last seen on Monday evening before being led to her death.

Instead, her parents are being comforted by relatives and friends, having being catapulted into unimaginable grief.

They will struggle with one question surrounding their beautiful daughter’s death: Why?

Why on earth would someone want to end the life of a vivacious, 14-year-old schoolgirl?

One thing is certain from the initial investigations – this was no random attack.

Whoever was responsible left Ana virtally unrecognisable – battered repeatedly with stones, rocks and sticks.

If the killer had some warped motivation for attacking her – and there can be none – why did they not leave her be when she lay crying and bloodied on the ground?

One can only hope gardai recover enough evidence from the scene to bring charges over what is one of the most horrific murders in Irish criminal history.