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A hero dad has drowned in a doomed bid to try to save his tragic son and his son's girlfriend from the waters.

Barry Ryan, 51, dived into the sea to save Barry Jnr, who had jumped in after Niamh O’Connor was swept away by a freak wave.

His young daughter Charlotte saw the horrific events at Baltimore, Co Cork, and raised the alarm.

21-year-old Barry Jnr dived into the water in a doomed attempt to save Niamh O’Connor, 20, after she was swept into the sea by a freak wave at Baltimore, Co Cork.

When he too got into difficulty, his dad Barry Ryan Snr - whose father Arthur founded Penneys and Primark - jumped in, the Irish Mirror reports.

Barry Snr’s 12-year-old daughter Charlotte, who had been walking with the trio on the rocks at the Beacon near the mouth of Baltimore harbour, ran to raise the alarm after seeing the tragedy unfold as her dad screamed for help from the water.

Two tourists who heard her cries for help called 999 but despite the fact the Baltimore Lifeboat crew were on the scene in less than 10 minutes it was too late to save Niamh and Barry Snr, whose bodies were found floating close to where they went in.

Rescuers, then paramedics, spent almost an hour trying to resuscitate them as efforts continued to find Barry Jnr.

Niamh and Barry Snr were later pronounced dead and a huge sea search was due to continue at first light today in a bid to find Barry Jnr’s body.

Last night numbed relatives of the Ryans told how the horrendous loss felt like a “bad dream”.

A cousin, Jean Hegarty, told RTE News: “She [Charlotte] said, ‘I can’t believe they’re dead’. How do you say to a 12-year-old child...how to make sense of that? You just can’t.

“I was with Anne [Barry’s mum] and, you know, it’s like a bad dream. You think you’re going to wake up any minute and this is not real.”

Charlotte is said to have been left deeply traumatised by seeing her dad and brother drown.

Baltimore RNLI coxswain Kieran Cotter, who has volunteered on the sea for more than 40 years, told the Irish Mirror: “Three people losing their lives in a small community like this is extremely devastating. It’s just so, so sad.”

Mr Cotter, who has volunteered on the sea for more than 40 years, said: “We found Barry Snr and Niamh straight away.

“They were still on the surface but maybe we got there a couple of minutes too late for young Barry.

“One of our guys just spotted two bodies and he jumped in.

“He held the girl up out of the water and got one casualty on board the lifeboat and the other on the inshore lifeboat because it arrived at the same time.

“Then we started CPR as we took them back to shore. For us, the rules are that the casualty in the water is not dead until they are pronounced dead by the doctor so we tried to do our best.”

Barry Snr, who is originally from Dublin and is a son of Primark and Penneys’ founder Arthur Ryan, and University College Cork student Niamh, who is from Glanmire, were later pronounced dead.

And despite frantic searches for Barry Jnr’s body up until night fell at 10pm, rescue teams had to retire until 5am this morning.

His devastated mother Anne was being comforted by family and friends at their home in the townland of Lackaghane as she struggled to come to terms with the enormity of losing her husband and her son in a freak accident.

A local, who did not want to be named, fought back tears as she revealed: “Anne moved up to Dublin when she was a young woman and that’s where she met and married Barry and they had their kids.

“But they moved back here several years ago so Anne could look after her sick mum.

“Her mum died last year and that hit her hard and now this. It’s just too much.

“She has her husband’s body but her poor young son is still out there and we are all just hoping and praying they find him soon.

“Coastal communities like us are far too familiar with grief and tragedy and loss and it’s too much.”

Meanwhile in Glanmire the O’Connor family were left crippled with grief over how their young daughter’s trip to visit her new boyfriend’s family could end in such unthinkable tragedy.

Up to 100 people including lifeboat crews from Baltimore, West Cork and Schull, the

Irish Navy dive team, Irish Coast Guard personnel – with a helicopter – joined the intensive search for Barry Jnr’s body yesterday.

But there was no sign of his remains as darkness fell and there are now fears that bad weather forecast for the next few days could further hamper search efforts.

The sense of grief was palpable in Baltimore yesterday as the community rallied to comfort the bereaved, join the search and provide meals and flasks of hot drinks for the search teams.

One young waiter said: “We were all at football training and then we were told three people had drowned.

“We all ran to check our phones to make sure it wasn’t one of our families, because that’s always your automatic reaction when you live by the sea and you see so much tragedy.

“I knew Barry to see because he moved here only a few years ago so we didn’t grow up with him.

“It’s so sad and it affects everyone. My dad and all my mates’ dads volunteer on the lifeboats so things like this touch us all and we all try to do what we can.”

It was surreal to see holidaymakers from all over the world sitting eating their lunch alongside weary rescuers who were refuelling on soup and sandwiches before their next shift.

But the veil of grief that descended on the village was inescapable, despite the busloads of tourists arriving throughout the day.

Local Fianna Fail councillor Joe Carroll, who knew Barry Snr personally, added: “I met him the first day he moved here from Dublin and we always shared a joke and a laugh.

“He was great fun, a good man, and very devoted to Anne and his two kids. He went back and forward to Dublin a lot but I regularly bumped into him out and about.

“Anne is from the Harris family, a very well-known family here in Baltimore, and everyone’s heart is just broken for her and her daughter.

“Three deaths in this small place, just at the start of the summer. It’s so tragic.”

A small crowd of mourners gathered at Niamh’s family home to comfort her heartbroken parents as a postmortem was carried out on her body at Cork University Hospital.

A postmortem was also carried out on Barry Snr’s body as his family waited for news from the search teams.

There was a sombre mood at the Sibin bar in Rath, close to where Barry lived and where he liked to pop in for a pint.

A poster on a notice board beside the pub advertises a charity golf classic this Saturday to raise money for the Baltimore Lifeboat.

One man said: “You look at that thinking of Barry and those poor kids and you see why it’s so important the crew get funds and have the right equipment.”