MISSING BOBBY’S VAN FOUND ‘BY MISTAKE’
MARY Lowry denied this week that it was unusual that she had driven past her house ‘by mistake’ and that she took Bobby Ryan’s daughter, Michelle, to a Tipperary beauty spot, Kilshane Woods, on the day he disappeared.
The women had been out looking for Mr Ryan after he failed to turn up for work at a nearby quarry.
His silver Citroen van was found abandoned at the woods.
Ms Lowry said she was driving to her own house, but was ‘so alarmed’ by events that she forgot to drive into her own drive-way and continued on towards Kilshane Wood.
She claimed the reason she’d driven in the direction of the woods is because Michelle had kept saying: ‘I think my dad is in a wood somewhere.’
‘I suppose, subconsciously, I thought of a wood and kept driving,’ Ms Lowry said.
Ms Lowry and Michelle drove around for some minutes before finding the van at the woods, 5km from Ms Lowry’s home.
Ms Lowry explained to the court that Mr Ryan’s disappearance had come as a bolt from the blue to her.
She said that he had left her house at 6.30am on June 3, 2011, and all of a sudden, he was missing.
‘I was alarmed and frightened,’ she said. ‘I thought my bad luck had finished, but it seemed to be starting, really.’
Earlier, she had told the court that she did not remember asking a relative of Mr Ryan’s if gardaí could tell if a body had been in the boot of a car.
‘I thought my bad luck had finished’