The bodies of two young Irish construction workers, killed when scaffolding around a Boston building collapsed, are expected to be flown back to Ireland this week after post-mortems.
The accident happened on Tuesday afternoon as the men were working on scaffolding around the seventh storey of an apartment building in the Quincy area of south-west Boston. The two men fell about 70 feet and were buried in the collapsed scaffolding and other debris.
After the collapse, bricks, plywood and pieces of metal were piled about 15 feet high in the building's rear car-park.
The two men were named as Mr Shane McGettigan (21), of Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim, and Mr Ronan Stewart (23), of Dundalk, Co Louth. Mr Shane McGettigan was the only son of the singer and songwriter Charlie McGettigan, who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 with the song Rock'n'Roll Kids.
Mr Stewart, of Dublin Road, Dundalk, had applied to leave the Army and was on pre-discharge leave at the time of the accident. He grew up in Dundalk, and his father Michael is a vice-principal of O Fiaich College, a secondary school in the town.
It took 35 firefighters more than an hour to dig out the two men.
A resident said the workers were trying to stop leaks in the building by replacing old bricks when the accident occurred. The Quincy fire chief, Mr Thomas Gorman, said that the scaffolding "fell down like a deck of cards".
Yesterday afternoon Mr Stewart's sister, Clodagh (29), who had travelled to Boston to see him last Saturday, had to formally identify his body.
Capt Eoghan O Neachtain of the Army Press Office confirmed the dead man had joined the Army in December 1996 and was a member of the 2nd Battalion, but would have been discharged yesterday. The two men killed in the accident did not know each other before meeting in Boston last month.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the accident.
One of two men killed in US entitled to Army funeral: page 7