Stardust orphan: Fire left me all on my own in this world. Pain was never-ending
A WOMAN who was just 17 months old when she was orphaned by the Stardust disaster has said she is ‘absolutely elated’ by the verdicts.
Lisa Lawlor lost her mother Maureen, 23, and father Francis Lawlor, 25, in the Valentine’s Day blaze and spent her entire life searching for answers.
‘I was in nappies the last time I saw both my parents. They went to Stardust and they didn’t come home,’ she said yesterday. ‘When you’re going through something like this, you just think it will never end. It was never-ending. ‘At one stage I just couldn’t get through it. I just really thought that this was going to end up that we weren’t going to get a result, but I am so, so happy today.’
Ms Lawlor had given evidence to the inquest that she ‘grew up in the shadow of this disaster’.
She said she had been left with ‘a wound that will never be healed’, adding: ‘I’m an only child and the Stardust left me on my own in this world.’
When news of the fire broke, her teenage babysitter ran out of the house because a member of her family was at the disco.
As a result, 17-month-old Lisa was left alone until 11am the next day when her mother’s parents found her ‘beating my little head against the bars as if I knew something terrible had happened’.
She told how her mother had been reluctant to go the Valentine’s Day dance because Lisa was just getting over a cough, but her father had persuaded her they should ‘take some time to themselves for once’ as they rarely went out.
She told the jury of the trauma and heartache both she and her extended family endured following the fire.
‘I listened night after night to my grandmother’s wails, who wished she died and not my father,’ she said. ‘I was in terror listening to this for years.’
Bridget McDermott, 86, who lost three of her children, William, Marcella and George in the fire was also in court for the verdicts. Her daughter Louise paid tribute to her mother, saying: ‘Our mother is here, and we don’t know how she’s still with us, but she is and she was here today to get the unlawful killing [verdicts] of her three children. For 43 years we had to fight and we shouldn’t have had to have done. None of us. We shouldn’t be here now, this should have been sorted and done long ago.
‘I’d really just like to say to the 48 now that we’re taking you out of the flames, the darkness and the smoke of the Stardust and we’re bringing you back to the sunshine, and the light and the music, and you’re coming back to us, home.’
Pat Dunne lost her brother Brian Hobbs in the fire.
She said: ‘Brian was number 29 for years, which was disgraceful. He’s now Brian Hobbs, which is very important for me. He will forever be Brian Hobbs, the baby of our family.’
Siobhán Kearney, whose brother Liam died 25 days after the fire, said: ‘There was a lot of heroes there that night that helped and showed the type of people that were in that club, working class people. May they all rest in peace.’
Gertrude Barrett, mother of Michael Barrett, said: ‘When you’re driven by desire, they’re ain’t any boundaries. This day belongs to my son Michael and the 47 others that perished with him.’
‘In nappies the last time I saw parents’