The mum of a teenager who was tragically found dead in a ditch after a night out has said she will be "traumatised for the rest of her life".
Matthew McCallan, 15, went missing after attending a country music event in Fintona, Co Tyrone in December.
A search was carried out before his body was found in a ditch by a passer-by two days later. A postmortem found Matthew died of hypothermia.
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The PSNI has referred itself to the Police Ombudsman over concerns raised by Matthew’s family about the initial response to the search for him.
In an interview with Belfast Live, his mum Frances opened up about the trauma she and husband Peter faced when told his body had been found.
Frances said: “I already knew he was gone, but to hear those words, 'there has been a body found', it’s just your worst nightmare.
“I’m traumatised and I’ll be traumatised for the rest of my life to know that it’s possibly one of the worst deaths, to know he died alone in a ditch.
“It haunts me every night and every day and I’ll never be the same person again and neither will Peter. I’ve lost a huge part of me, I’ve lost everything because he was everything to me. He was the reason why I got up in the morning."
Frances told of the "haunting vision" she continues to have about her son.
She said: “The house is empty. People don’t realise the impact this has had on everybody from his aunts and uncles to his cousins, his friends.
“It has caused a lot of anxiety and stress. I never cried for the first month, not one tear did I shed. I was numb. And then they started to flow, but for the first month I had no heart.
“You don’t sleep at night, you’ve got haunting visions of him walking around the roads in Fintona. Those thoughts haunted me and they’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Frances describes a young man who was growing in confidence as he approached his late teens. She said he had a great love for everything in the outdoors.
“As a young lad he was shy, but when he got to know you he was himself. Farming, cows, out on the tractor with his granda, he absolutely loved his cousins and they were like brothers and sisters to him because he was obviously an only child.
“As he got older he started to grow into himself, he still lacked that wee bit of confidence but in the last six months he had really come out of himself.
“He was just loving life to the full and he had the most amazing summer.
“He was there for you all the time, any hour of the day. If you needed Matthew, you just had to pick up the phone and he was there.
“He wore his heart on his sleeve, he would have thrown his arms around you and told you he loved you," she said.
The impact of Matthew’s death has led to Frances rarely leaving her home.
She continued: “I don’t go out really, I don’t want people approaching me. If I go somewhere, I go somewhere where nobody knows me. I feel very nervous and I feel very safe in my bubble at home, that’s my way of protecting myself.
“I wanted grandchildren and all that, I had packed away Matthew’s farm and farm animals into the attic in the hope some day that we would have grandchildren.
“I’m just keeping myself busy in the house and my little dog here keeps me company.”
The support provided to the McCallan family from Matthew’s young friends has been a great source of comfort to them.
Frances added: “I don’t think I could have got through it without my own family and Peter’s family have been fantastic, but his wee friends are something else.
“They don’t get the recognition they deserve in life, people are too hard on them, they’re a great bunch of kids.
“His friends are absolutely amazing. They come in here and throw their big arms around me like Matthew would have done.
“They really have been fantastic, they are keeping me going to have that youth in the house, telling me stories about him and showing me TikToks.”
To celebrate Matthew’s 16th birthday, the McCallan family are organising a tractor run in aid of SARDA (Search and Rescue Dog Association) and other local groups. It will run from Carrickmore to Dungannon, where she lives.
Frances had raised concerns with the PSNI as to the initial response to the missing person enquiry, including why the canine search volunteers were not asked to contribute when they were ready to do so.
She said: “Matthew will be 16 on 12 March and we thought it would be a good thing because he loved tractors obviously," she said.
“All he could talk about in the run up to his sixteenth was getting his tractor licence. We thought what a nicer way to spend his sixteenth than to have a tractor run.
“I want to make it a fun day for everybody, to keep Matthew’s memory alive because that’s what he was all about.”
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