Hi °C | Lo °C THE 21st birthday of missing Amy Fitzpatrick was marked at her former primary school with the opening of a garden in her honour.
Amy’s mother, stepfather Dave, some of her old teachers and present pupils gathered at St Catherine’s National School in Artane as Lord Mayor Naoise O’Muiri cut the ribbon on the little garden.
Amy was aged just 16 when she vanished from the family's Spanish home, in Calahona on the Costa del Sol, on New Year's Day 2008. There has been no trace found of her since.
Principal Moira Bennett recalled Amy as the girl “with the biggest smile”.
She said she attended the school between second and sixth class and was “kind, lovely and gentle”, and got on with everyone.
“She is often on my mind”, she said, before present pupils at the school sang their anthem “There is a better way”.
The garden, which includes a little seating area and pots of pansies and trees, is set to become an intimate space for the students to chat and relax.
Amy’s mother Audrey said she was touched by the school’s gesture as now they had somewhere special to come and remember.
Audrey, who said she now accepts Amy is dead, said that when somebody goes missing, “you are in limbo all the time”.
