Newtownards crash: Six-year-old boy dies after being knocked down outside school

The child, aged six, was conveyed to hospital, but did not survive.

Although it happened not far from the Model Primary School on Newtownards’ Scrabo Road, the boy was a pupil at St Finian’s Primary School in the town.

Sympathies were expressed not just for the child’s family last night, but also for the driver of the vehicle which had hit him.

The principal of the school, Barry Coulter, was contacted last night but said that the school would not be releasing any information until sometime this morning.

Gina Cully said that the accident had left her own child, aged eight, in an “awful state”.

“It’s just horrendous,” she said.

The ambulance service was summoned to the scene at around 3.15pm.

Jim Shannon, the DUP MP for the Strangford area, said that, as a grandfather to a child roughly the same age, he could imagine how the family felt.

He hoped God would console them in their time of “incredible grief” over their loss, but added: “The words we can say can never fill that gap.”

The accident is the latest in a number which have claimed the lives of small children in the Province since Christmas (see below).

The schoolboy who died was said to have been struck not far from his home. It is also thought that the male driver of the vehicle was from the area, too.

Mr Shannon said: “What can be more traumatic than the loss of a child? We can feel their pain. I think the whole of us in the community can really feel for the family.”

His hope is that “God’s own hand will be not that far from them; He will comfort them at this time of incredible grief and sustain them at the time their hearts are breaking, whenever their tears will fill their eyes like they’ve never filled them before”.

Kieran McCarthy, Alliance MLA for Strangford, said that the road is a busy one, and with the Model school situated nearby, it “generates a lot of traffic at that time of day”.

“It’s a dangerous spot alright,” he said.

He said there was “not much that can be said”, except to express his own sympathies and sadness.

SDLP councillor Joe Boyle said: “It’s an experience I suppose could be described as every parent’s worst nightmare.”

He added that his thoughts also went out to the driver of the vehicle involved.

“They probably have a burden now for the rest of their lives,” he said. “If something like that happens in the course of your day, out driving, it’s something that’ll stay with you.”

In Bangor, another child (thought to be aged five) was struck by a vehicle on Wednesday evening. Details were sparse, but it is understood the child suffered minor injuries.

And in south Down, a man was taken to hospital after a two-vehicle crash on the main Newry-Warrenpoint road, but did not need to be admitted.

SERIES OF TRAGEDIES:

The death of the schoolboy is one of a number of tragedies to befall small children across the Province since Christmas.

A fatal crash on Boxing Day claimed the life of seven-year-old Jackson Turner.

It happened between Mossley and Monkstown in Newtownabbey, and also left several others injured.

On January 5, a chest of drawers fell on Archie Taft, two, crushing him to death in Cloughmills, Co Antrim.

And on January 9, Ella Trainor – aged six – died following a road crash on the Hilltown Road in Co Down, which also injured her mother Susan.

It is believed the child’s death in Newtownards is the third fatality on the Province’s roads so far in 2016, following Ella’s death and that of a 75-year-old woman after a collision on the A2, north Down, on January 4.