The body of Irish bride-to-be Ruth Maguire was found in Carlingford Lough, Co Louth, on Monday. It is believed she lost her way on the way home from a bachelorette party.
The devastated family of young Irish mother Ruth Maguire has revealed plans to bury the mother-of-three in the wedding dress she was never given the opportunity to wear. The 30-year-old tragically lost her life on Saturday night after a drowning accident.
Maguire, a nursing assistant who lived in Newcastle, Co Down, was set to marry her partner of twelve years this August but will now be laid to rest in her dress. The young woman and her future husband, James Griffin, had three children together, two sons Tyler (10) and Oliver (5) and a daughter, Lydia (7).
The alarm was first raised that Maguire was missing on Sunday, St Patrick’s Day, when the bachelorette party she was traveling with realized she had not come home the previous night.
"She hadn't rang anybody ... James brought the kids to my mum's right away and then he went down and tried to find her,” Maguire’s sister Rachel Wilkinson told the Irish Independent.
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Ruth Maguire (right) and her sister Rachel Wilkinson
"Nobody really knows what happened. Ruth had put out a short video with no sound on Instagram at 12.12am on Sunday and that was the last time she used her phone.
"But on that image, there was a picture of a doorway to a small cottage across the road from the entrance to the pier and that's what triggered the whole search in the lough."
The search and rescue team found Maguire's lifeless body on Monday as her family began to struggle with the death of "a beautiful person who had everything to live for."
Griffin had been the last person to speak to Maguire on the previous evening.
“She was in good form, she sounded happy and she didn't sound like she'd had a lot to drink or anything; she just seemed normal,” her sister said, adding that as the hens left the party in a local bar in “dribs and drabs,” Maguire may have found herself alone.
"I think she'd lost her bearings," Wilkinson said.
Ruth Maguire and fiancé James Griffin.
"She was trying to find where they were staying. They were actually staying six or seven doors down from there so she'd got herself to the road she should've been on but she was at the wrong section. But she'd more or less got herself back on track ... which was why it didn't make sense for her to cross the road and go onto the pier..."
"I'm in a bit of denial and shock," Maguire's devastated sister added.
"I had to tell our seven-year-old son Louis what had happened because I was so upset but I can't tell our other son Oscar (3) as he's too young.
"We can't get our heads around it so we can't really expect them to understand ... and it was absolutely heartbreaking for James to have to tell their children."
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