Priests tells young to be brave and say ‘No’ to drink games

Young people at the funeral of a teenager who died after taking part in a neknomination challenge at the weekend have been urged to be brave and to try to stop the craze which has left a family "torn asunder".

Up to 500 people who attended the funeral of Jonathan (Jonny) Byrne (19) in Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow, yesterday heard parish priest Fr Thomas Lalor speak of peer pressure that led to many risks and challenges but that could have "disastrous consequences".

Drank a pint
Mr Byrne's body was found on Sunday morning, hours after he drank a pint and entered the river Barrow at Milford Bridge on Saturday night. The mourners, his parents Kathleen and Joe, brother Patrick and other relatives and friends, clapped and wept all at once as they heard his father speak about the talented young hurler, "a marvellous chap", who was loved by everybody and whose life was cut short at such a young age. He remembered the day as "an ordinary day, like every other Saturday," until, after dinner, Jonathan, Patrick and Patrick's girlfriend Emma left the house. "Twenty minutes later the phone call came in that would change our lives forever."

He remembered Jonny as a young child who wanted to have a walking stick like his grandfather, who later learned cards with his grandmother and went everywhere with a hurley in his hand. Sometimes, Mr Byrne said, he wouldn't go to his son's hurling matches in case Jonny thought he would be critical, but would always hear word back from those who were there: "God you should have seen him, he was marvellous".

Full of risks
In his homily, Fr Lalor said that life was full of risks, sometimes harmless, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Speaking directly to the young people in the church, he said: “People need to be brave. People need to say ‘No’, find there is a greatness in this. You have heard of ‘the power of one’. Just as this craze is supposed to have been started by one person, it can be stopped by one person.

“Let you be that person. If you are faced with this challenge, be strong, be great, and make a worthwhile contribution. You owe it to Jonathan Byrne.”