GLASS DEATH MEGAN SAVED WOMAN’S LIFE
Funeral hears teen performed CPR on pensioner weeks before she died
A TEENAGER saved the life of an elderly woman just weeks before her own tragic death, mourners heard yesterday.
Megan O’connor, 18, died two days before Christmas when she suffered a cut to her groin.
It’s believed she fell on a glass bottle which she had been carrying in her waistband. Tributes were paid to the kind-hearted woman at her funeral at St Thomas The Apostle Church in Jobstown, West Dublin, yesterday.
Fr Pat Mckinley told mourners: “A part of Megan’s life was highlighted in the most powerful and beautiful way just weeks before she died when she saved a woman’s life by giving artificial respiration while waiting on an ambulance.”
MOURNERS at the funeral of Megan O’connor heard how she saved an elderly woman’s life just weeks before her own death in a freak accident.
The 18-year-old died just two days before Christmas when she suffered a cut to her groin following a fall.
It’s believed the young Dubliner fell on a glass bottle that she had been carrying in her waistband.
At her funeral Mass yesterday at St Thomas The Apostle Church in Jobstown, Fr Pat Mckinley told mourners Megan was “a young woman who was full of life and full of love”.
He also told the story of how the talented sportswoman had saved the life of a pensioner after she spotted she was in difficulty on the Luas.
Kindhearted Megan performed CPR on the woman and the heroic teen waited until help arrived.
Fr Mckinley said: “A part of Megan’s life was highlighted in the most powerful and the most beautiful way just a couple of weeks before she died when she literally saved a woman’s life by giving artificial respiration to her while waiting on an ambulance on the Luas.
“So Megan was, in her short life, quite literally a life-saver.
“That fact she had saved someone’s life just in the last few weeks I suppose makes the reality and the freak manner of her death all the more difficult to take on.”
The popular teen’s friends and family packed the small Tallaght church to pay their respects and bid a final farewell.
Many of her pals wept openly and comforted each other during the moving ceremony.
A number of her friends wore T-shirts with her picture on them.
Gifts including boxing gloves and a Manchester United jersey were brought to the altar in memory of the sports-mad young woman.
Fr Mckinley told the congregation Megan was a dreamer who hoped to find a job as an engineer so she could help her mother buy a house.
He said: “The beauty of Megan’s heart is clear to me in the measure of what those dreams she started to dream were.
“Because the heart of those dreams was about helping other people. She wasn’t doing it for herself, it was so she could help other people.”