Berkeley collapse: Injured student Niall Murray flies home

Another of the seven Irish students injured in the Berkeley balcony collapse in California in June has returned to Ireland.

Niall Murray (21), from Rathfarnham in Dublin, arrived home on Wednesday morning on the direct overnight Aer Lingus flight from San Francisco after weeks of rehabilitation in a Californian hospital.

He is the sixth of the injured students to return to Ireland, three months after the June 16th incident that claimed the lives of six other students.

Mr Murray was receiving treatment at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San José, about 76km south of San Francisco, for a broken wrist, three broken fingers and a broken heel and elbow.

Hannah Waters (21), from Castleknock in Dublin, is the only survivor of the fourth-floor balcony collapse still being treated in California. She is also being treated in the San José hospital and is expected to fly back to Ireland some time next week.

Five Dublin students, Eoghan Culligan, Niccolai Schuster, Lorcán Miller, Eimear Walsh and Olivia Burke, and Ms Burke's cousin Ashley Donohoe from Rohnert Park, California, died in the incident.

The 13 students were celebrating the 21st birthday of Aoife Beary, one of the seven injured in the incident, at the time.

Three-month anniversary

Marking the three-month anniversary since the collapse, another of the Berkeley survivors, Clodagh Cogley, who flew back to Dublin on the August Bank Holiday weekend, remembered the six who died.

"I don't have the words to describe the sadness of their passing, so all I will say is that I am thinking of their families and friends. They are deeply missed," Ms Cogley wrote in a message on Facebook.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Mr Murray told reporters in California last week that he would “always remember that night”.

He recalled the group of friends in the apartment joking and laughing, playing a game where the 21st birthday girl gets 21 kisses, before hearing a “big rumble” as the balcony collapsed.

The NUI Galway student said he would give anything to be able to go back and warn his friends not to go out on the balcony of apartment 405 at 2020 Kittredge Street in downtown Berkeley.

Flanked by his mother and brother, his doctor Dr James Crew and other medical staff, Mr Murray, remembering the six who died, told the press conference: "Our friends, we'll miss you, we will always remember you and someday we look forward to seeing you again."