Degree award to honour memory

KAREN Buckley i s to be awarded an honorary degree by the university where she was studying at the time of her murder.

Glasgow Caledonian University bosses are drawing up plans to award her posthumously the postgraduate nursing degree she began just months before her death.

Miss Buckley, 24, started the two-year masters in occupational therapy at Glasgow Caledonian last year and had thrown herself i nto her studies.

She grew up in the small rural Irish village of Mourneabbey, near Mallow, County Cork, with her older brothers Brendan, 32, Kieran, 28, and Damien, 27, two of whom live in Australia.

One of the last times the family were all together was in May last year when Brendan Buckley married his wife Niamh.

After school, Miss Buckley went on to study nursing at the University of Limerick, where she settled quickly into college life, joining clubs and societies.

During her four years there, she spent time working on wards in University Hospital Limerick and St John’s Hospital in Ennis. She graduated from Limerick in January 2014 and went travelling to the US and Thailand, before a stint nursing at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex.

It was during her studies that she decided to specialise in occupational therapy, planning to work in London after studying in Glasgow.

Now Glasgow Caledonian University is to honour her memory with the degree award.

After the court case ended, her father John Buckley, 62, paid a moving tribute to his daughter and spoke about her love of Glasgow.

He said: ‘She loved Glasgow and the Caledonian University… She will always be in our broken hearts wherever we go.’