Updated 7.55am
THE FUNERAL MASS for Garda Tony Golden will take place in St Oliver Plunkett Church, Blackrock, Co Louth at noon tomorrow.
Arrangements are being made by the Garda Representative Association to bring gardaí from all over the country to the funeral by bus.
The notice of the funeral says that Garda Golden’s wife Nicola and their three young children Lucy, Alex and Andrew are “heartbroken” by his death.
The 36-year-old was shot dead while responding to a domestic abuse case at a house near Omeath in Co Louth on Sunday evening.
Speaking on RTÉ’S Morning Ireland yesterday, garda chaplain Fr Joe Kennedy said he has visited Garda Golden’s wife and the couple’s children – all under the age of eight.
“I’d never met Nicola before but I just said to her there are no words that anybody can say, nothing can be done to change what’s happened.”
Kennedy said Golden’s relatives and his “Garda family” are all “devastated”.
Everybody rallies around to be the best support they can be.
The chief celebrant for tomorrow’s Mass will be Father Pádraig Keenan, Parish Priest of Haggardstown in the Archdiocese of Armagh.
The Vicar General of the Archdiocese, Dean Colum Curry, will preside at this Mass and will represent Archbishop Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh.
‘Trying to keep the peace’
Kennedy said the coming days will be about “celebrating Tony’s life” and the great man and guard he was.
“I just thought how inappropriate and incongruous and futile the events of Sunday were – a young man just doing his job, a guardian of the peace … trying got keeping the peace.”
A young man’s life gone, children now without their dad and Nicola without her husband.
The arrangements for tomorrow’s funeral note that the church in Blackrock has a limited capacity of three hundred seats but there will be outdoor screens both in the church grounds and village of Blackrock.
Adrian Crevan Mackin (24) shot and killed Garda Golden before taking his own life. A woman, believed to be Mackin’s girlfriend, was also shot during the incident. She is in a critical condition at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.
- With reporting by Rónán Duffy
- First published 13 October
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