The brother of Arthur McElhill, who died along with his partner Lorraine and five children in the Omagh fire tragedy in November, has spoken about how the tragedy crushed his family and left them broken-hearted.
Cathal McElhill was also critical of some media coverage of the fire at Lammy Crescent in Omagh. He said it intensified the grief of the McElhill family.
The PSNI is treating the Omagh fire as murder.
And while it has not named Arthur McElhill as being responsible for spraying and setting alight the petrol that caused the blaze, it is believed that he did start the fire. Police are not looking for anyone in connection with the fire.
Mr McElhill yesterday told Kevin Magee of BBC Radio Ulster that the tragedy caused heartbreak to him and his family. "I am just crushed," he said. "Our thoughts, my thoughts, are that I will never see them wee children, or my brother, or Lorraine, ever again. It is just unbelievable."
Mr McElhill said that he did not want to make any comment about his late brother. "I am fed up with what people think. I want to grieve. I want to have memories. I want to keep my memories of him," he said.
"I am just disappointed at how such a tragedy can be taken and made into something that is beyond all words," he added.
"We've had such a great loss and what has been done with the stories, it hasn't made us grieve any differently. It's just made it a lot harder . . . that's the way I feel and that's the way I know the rest of my brothers and sisters and my mother and father feel."
Mr McElhill said he visited the family in Omagh a couple of days before the fire. "The children were jolly, they were jumping up and down, they were just being the children they always were, happy-go-lucky children . . ."
