Tragic flat fire victim Ellen Finnegan aged 19

HUNDREDS of people are expected to attend Requiem Mass this morning for the young woman who perished in a flat fire at the weekend.

Ellen Finnegan, 19, died after being overcome with smoke after the fire broke out in the flat above her father’s butcher shop in Castlewellan’s Lower Square.

It was the third anniversary of her mother’s death from cancer.

The cause of the fire still under investigation.

Her remains will her grandfather’s house at 11 am for 12 noon Requiem Mass in St Malachy’s Catholic Church.

Yesterday, a priest revealed that the Mr Finnegan was taking comfort fom her last words which were “I love you dad”.

Fr Sean Rogan said Ellen had been “vibrant, full of joy, full of happiness, full of fun”.

Ellen’s father, Bartley, was due to have gone skiing on the morning the tragedy happened.

“The last thing she did before she went to bed, she rang her dad and she was so happy that she virtually sang the following words,” Fr Rogan said.

“He said, she said ‘I want to wish you dad a very, very happy time skiing and I want to tell you I love you, dad, I love you, I love you’ and, if there is any solace at all for Bartley Finnegan at this time, that perhaps is one of the things that he will always, always appreciate.

“The last words that he heard from the daughter he loved were ‘I love you’.”

Ellen, a pupil at Assumption Grammar School in Ballynahinch, was about to sit the last of her A-Levels and had just been offered a place at Liverpool University.

Pupils from the school are expected to form a guard of honour today at St Malachy’s Church.