The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Emotional tributes to US balcony plunge victims
Dublin: City in shock at loss of five students on the brink of bright futures
Emotional tributes have been paid to the Irish students who died in the US balcony collapse.
University College Dublin (UCD) students Niccolai Schuster and Eoghan Culligan had also studied together at St Mary’s College in Rathmines, Dublin.
The school offered prayers for all those who died and were injured in the accident in Berkeley, California.
“The thoughts and prayers of everybody in the St Mary’s community are with the families of Niccolai and Eoghan, and the other Irish youngsters who died or were injured in the heartbreaking accident in the United States yesterday,” a spokesman said.
Lorcan Miller was a former pupil at St Andrew’s College in Booterstown, south Dublin, where his mother had taught Irish, and had gone on to study medicine at UCD, as had Eimear Walsh.
Headmaster Peter Fraser recalled Lorcan as an exceptional person.
“He was positive, engaging, decent boy who was incredibly talented but normal, modest and balanced about it all. He was hugely popular,” Mr Fraser said.
A large number of those at the party in the Berkeley apartment complex knew each other from UCD and also from connections with schools in south Dublin.
Eoghan Culligan was also a highly regarded Gaelic football player and turned out for Ballyboden St Enda’s in a county final in 2011.
“Eoghan was very popular with his team-mates and this tragic news is keenly felt by all members of our club,” a spokesman said.
Olivia Burke was remembered as a very well-liked student in a close-knit group at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT).
The 21-year-old was expected back at the south Dublin college in September to start her final year of a degree in entrepreneurship and management.
Olivia was one of up to 30 students from IADT who go to the US every year on a J1 summer working holiday visa.
She and Eimear Walsh, a medicine student at UCD, were former classmates at Loreto College in south Dublin. In a statement the school said it was “deeply saddened and shocked” by the tragedy.