Man buried who went missing 18 years ago

FOR the past 18 years, Aengus ‘Gussie’ Shanahan remained a ghostly image on a missing persons poster.

However, speaking at his funeral Mass yesterday, his cousin, Fr Aquinas Duffy, said he is ‘no longer frozen in time’ from the day he disappeared, aged 20 in February 2000.

Improvements in DNA technology led to confirmation last month that fragments of bone discovered on the Shannon Estuary 17 years ago belonged to the Limerick man. The announcement hit the family ‘like a thunderbolt’, his father Bob said.

Mourners packed into Our Lady of Rosary Church on the Ennis Road yesterday for Gussie’s funeral Mass. Fr Duffy, said the family had finally found closure. ‘He is no longer frozen in time, aged 20, on the 11 of February, 2000,’ Fr Duffy said. ‘Gussie is truly free.’

Fr Duffy, set up the missing.ie website in 2000 as a result of Gussie’s disappearance.