Kelso family now able to say farewell to Andrew after weeks of searching for 28-year-old’s body

A mother mourning for the second of her sons to drown in the River Tweed is bracing herself to say only the briefest of goodbyes to him at a graveside funeral service in Kelso next week.
A memorial mass for the late Andrew Moriarty will have to wait until after the current coronavirus crisis.A memorial mass for the late Andrew Moriarty will have to wait until after the current coronavirus crisis.
A memorial mass for the late Andrew Moriarty will have to wait until after the current coronavirus crisis.

The body of Andrew Moriarty was recovered from the river near Norham in Northumberland at around 1pm last Thursday, April 2, weeks after he went missing during a night out in his home-town of Kelso.

The 28-year-old’s funeral will take place in Kelso on Friday, April 17, but it will have to be a private affair due to Scottish Government restrictions on movement intended to curb the spread of coronavirus.

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Friends not able to attend can use the online condolence page at rip.ie to offer their sympathies, and a memorial mass to celebrate Andrew’s all-too-short life is planned at a later date.

In the meanwhile, his family wish to thank everyone involved in searches for him over the last five weeks and those offering other support or prayers.

Police are still investigating the circumstances leading to the death of Andrew, of Hendersyde Park in Kelso but originally from County Kilkenny in Ireland.

His death is the second river-related tragedy his parents Ann and Andrew have had to contend with.

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Andrew’s younger brother Martin, 13 at the time, died 11 years ago after being pulled under water by strong currents near the River Tweed’s junction with the Teviot while swimming with friends.

Over recent weeks, Andrew’s family and friends tried in vain to track him down after his disappearance, scouring the banks of the Tweed even after the formal police search for him was called off over a week ago.

For his mother Ann, 56, the dreaded news that his body had been found brought both heartache and the small consolation that at least he can now be reunited with his beloved little brother.

She had retained a glimmer of hope that her son could still be alive, but in her heart she feared the worst, particularly as she never believed he would just disappear without contacting his family first.

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Ann now has to face up to the reality that she has lost a second son to the Tweed and prepare to give Andrew the best send-off possible in these unprecedented times.

She said: “It is really good and bad all at the same time.

“We have him back but it confirms that he has gone.

“When we got the news, it was what we kind of expected because we knew that Andrew wouldn’t just go and not tell us and that something bad must have happened to him. It just confirmed our worst fears.

“We can take comfort in that at least he was found and that we have got him back, even though we won’t see him, but we have got him back to do what needs to be done.

“He is going to have everything that his brother had. They are having the same coffins and headstones.

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“There will be flowers which will have an Irish theme, and we will all be wearing an Irish ribbon because he embraced his Irishness.

“It’s just going to be a graveside service, but what can you do? You just have to accept that because we are not the only people in this situation and we have to abide with what everybody else has to abide by.

“There is a church service being done privately at Birmingham which will be live-streamed to the rest of the family, so there will be a mass, but we won’t be there.

“My husband’s brother lives in Birmingham and we have a lot of family there. It will just be the priest on his own obviously.

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“Not being able to grieve in the way that we would at a normal time is strange.

“We would have wanted to give Andy a big send-off, but when everything is over and Covid-19 is over, we are going to have a memorial day and a mass and a party for all the family members that want to come from Ireland and from down south, and all his friends here obviously.”

A police investigation into Andrew’s final hours is continuing.

Prior to his body being found, he was last seen close to the town’s abbey at around 2am on Saturday, February 29, after leaving the Vibe nightclub in Vault Square.

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Ann, a mother of eight and grandmother of seven, said her family had drawn comfort from their belief that Andrew died while attempting to carry out an act of heroism.

The body of a woman believed to be missing Melita Hachey, 30, of Galashiels, but not yet formally identified was found last month near where friends of Andrew searched for him, and relatives speculate that he might have seen it first and tried to help.

Ann said: “We truly believe that he went in the water to pull that girl’s body out because nothing else would have taken Andrew into that water.”