A heartbroken Mother has told how she found out about her 21-year-old daughter’s death – by reading about it on Facebook.
Mother-of-three Deborah Byrne, 47, from Northampton, UK, was browsing her Facebook feed on May 23 last year, when she saw a memorial tribute to her beloved daughter Brogan Warren.
Scrolling through, she saw more and more messages – all paying tribute to Brogan.One friend wrote “Gone too soon” while another had said, “I can’t believe the news.”
Deborah feared the worst had happened to the daughter she called her “glitter girl”.
She said: “I just remember seeing lots of RIP messages. Then a friend of Brogan’s wrote to me “I’m so sorry” in a private message, so I asked what the hell she was talking about. She said there had been a horrific crash the night before, on May 22, and she would be there for me. That’s when I started screaming. The penny had dropped – Brogan was dead. At that moment my heart shattered.”
Frantic to find out what had happened, Deborah, also mom to 5-year-old Tianna, and Taylia, 23, called her sister, Tricia Byrne, who lived two minutes away in Northampton, where Tianna had been staying overnight.
With Tianna , she rushed to Deborah’s side. Taylia and Brogan’s Dad Joff Warren, 49, both living nearby in Northampton, came over, too.
Deborah had called Joff, who she separated from about 16 years ago, to say that he needed to get to her house before she broke the news to him.
Deborah said: “He was devastated, couldn’t believe what I was telling him.”
Taylia was then told the news.
“We were desperately trying to get hold of the Northamptonshire Police to get official confirmation of what had happened. But because the crash had happened in Oxfordshire, 45 miles away, Brogan’s name wasn’t coming up on our local police’s system. I couldn’t believe I’d found out about my daughter’s death on Facebook.
Eventually, at 1 p.m. on May 23, an official from Thames Valley Police confirmed Brogan had died, following a head-on crash.