Victim of Gortahork collision Jamie Diver ‘always wanted to help others’, funeral told

Jamie Diver, who died in a road traffic collision in west Donegal on Friday night, always wanted to help others, mourners at his funeral have been told.

Mr Diver, who was in his 20s, died at the scene of the single-vehicle crash in his home townland of Baltoney, Gortahork, alongside 17-year-old Shaun Martin McClafferty, whose funeral will take place in the same church on Thursday.

The friends died when the car they were in struck the gable wall of a house at around 9.30pm. The two other friends who were in the car were seriously injured, with one having been transferred from Letterkenny University Hospital to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

Around 1,000 people packed into Christ the King Church in Gortahork where parish priest Fr Donnchadh Ó Baoill told Mr Diver’s family that the large turnout for the funeral might give some little comfort, adding that it’s “truly amazing” how “one person can affect a community” and “gather us together”.

Among the mourners were Mr Diver’s parents Róise and Damien and his brothers Ryan - and partner Niamh - and Keith, his nephew Charlie, his uncle Kevin and wife Amanda, his cousins Eibhlin and Neil, as well as a circle of friends.

Gifts brought to the altar symbolising his life included a hat from Errigal Motors where he worked, a teacup, and a spanner and a buffer representing his passion for working with cars.

Fr Ó Baoill told mourners that the community was “at a loss for words” at the deaths of the two friends. The tragedy showed how fragile and “how easily broken we are”, he said.

Everything he knew about Mr Diver, the parish priest said, was “all good”. He always wanted to help others and had applied to become a firefighter as he “wanted to help others, to save others”.

His work took priority but it allowed him to help others and he never refused anybody any help he could give with regards to working on cars.

He was “a bit of a perfectionist” and his motto was that if something was worth doing, it was with doing well. “Whatever he did, he wanted to do it well,” Fr Ó Baoill said.

Mr Diver’s love of working with cars began when he was young and when in Transition Year at Pobailscoil Cloich Cheannfaola in Falcarragh, he did a car valeting course in Letterkenny.

His interest in cars led to him setting up his own business and he could be heard in Baltoney working late at night and early in the morning.

Many people in the parish and the surrounding parishes had been left with broken hearts, he said, and some were remembering their own loved ones, including the four young men from the area killed in a road collision in Magheraroarty just over six years ago.

“Jamie, you left us too soon but we are thankful and we are better people for knowing you and for being with us,” he said.

Gardaí are continuing to appeal to anyone who may have witnessed Friday night’s collision to contact them, especially any road users who may have camera footage, including dash-cam, who were travelling in the townland of Baltoney between 9pm and 9.30pm.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Milford garda station on 074 9153060, the Garda confidential line on 1800 666 111, or any garda station.