IRA bomb victim's father hails Dolores O'Riordan

16 January 2018

The father of an IRA bomb victim has paid tribute to Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan.

Dolores O'Riordan

The Irish star died on Monday (15.01.17), aged 46, and Colin Parry has hailed O'Riordan after he learned that the band's 1994 track 'Zombie' was written in memory of his 12-year-old son Tim, as well as three-year-old Johnathan Ball.

Colin - who only learned of the song's meaning following O'Riordan's death - explained: "Only yesterday did I discover that her group, or she herself, had composed the song in memory of the event in Warrington.

"I was completely unaware what it was about. My wife came home from the police centre where she worked yesterday and told me the news.

"I got the song up on my laptop, watched the band singing, saw Dolores and listened to the words. The words are both majestic and also very real."

Colin lost his son in an IRA bomb blast in Warrington in 1993, and he says that the Cranberries song is "very, very powerful".

He told the BBC's 'Good Morning Ulster' show: "The event at Warrington, like the many events that happened all over Ireland and Great Britain, affected families in a very real way and many people have become immune to the pain and suffering that so many people experienced during that armed campaign.

"To read the words written by an Irish band in such compelling way was very, very powerful.

"I likened it to the enormous amount of mail expressing huge sympathy that we received in the days, weeks and months following our loss."

O'Riordan - who led the band during the height of their success in 1990s - died at a hotel on Park Lane in London.

The police are not treating her death as suspicious.