Fire victim (5) was taken from blaze

THE FIVE-YEAR-OLD girl who died in a house fire in Boyle, Co Roscommon, in the early hours of Monday had initially been taken with her two sisters from the burning house by her father, her aunt said yesterday.

The final minutes of Mari Keane Connolly’s life only became known when her father, who suffered serious back injuries in the incident, told family members he had brought his three small daughters out on to the roof of an extension as flames spread through the house.

However, during a tragic series of events, Richard Connolly fell off the roof and his daughter climbed back into her burning home.

Mr Connolly, of Termon Road in Boyle, who has been commended for his bravery in saving two of his daughters, Lauren (8) and Naomi (6), did not know until family members broke the news at Sligo General Hospital on Monday morning that Mari had gone back into the house.

Her beloved Dora DVD was found intact under her body, close to an upstairs window.

Richard’s sister Orla yesterday outlined the sequence of events. She said her brother told her the details of the horrific experience when she visited him at the Mater hospital. “Richard woke up when he heard two bangs – first he thought it was our brother John coming in,” said Ms Connolly. He opened the bedroom door and he saw that the stairs was in flames.”

The bedroom was full of smoke but he closed the door and rushed to wake his three daughters. She said her brother got the three girls out the upstairs window, one by one, starting with the oldest and ending with Mari.

As the three girls huddled on the roof, their father went to walk around them to get to the window of the house next door, which also opened out on to the slightly sloping roof of the Connolly’s back extension.

“He was walking around the girls to get to the neighbours’ window but he slipped and fell down on to concrete steps,” she added.

“He shouted ‘Jump, Lauren’ and she slid down to the end of the roof and let herself drop, and then he said ‘Jump, Naomi’ and she did the same, and then he shouted ‘Jump, Mari’. Mr Connolly told his sister he thought she must have fallen off the roof on the other side of the extension.

Mari’s mother Teresa was in Sligo General Hospital when the fire occurred, having given birth to twins there on Saturday.

Mari’s funeral will be held in Boyle next Tuesday when arrangements will be made for her father to be brought by ambulance from Dublin. “He is in an awful lot of pain. He can feel a twitch in his legs,” said Orla, who said it was too early to speculate on whether he would be able to walk in the foreseeable future.

A man in his 30s was arrested yesterday afternoon in the Sligo area in relation to the fire. He was held at Boyle Garda station under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984.