Qrendi pays homage to the inseparable five

The church of Qrendi was yesterday drowning in grief and bursting at the seams, with mourners even flooding the village square to pay their last respects to the five teenagers who died tragically, early Saturday morning in Malta's worst traffic accident.

Practically every Qrendi resident attended the funeral in support of the distraught families and friends of the victims.

Christian Camilleri, 17, Osvaldo Vella, 17, Marco Abdilla, 17, Fabio Magro, 16, and the youngest, David Sacco, only 13, were inseparable friends, who had left their mark on the community for their tireless involvement and enthusiasm in the village feast.

They were active in various groups and were always organising events for fellow youths, an elderly villager said.

Outside the church, shocked Qrendi residents were trying to come to terms with the boys' awful lot, struggling to find some logical explanation as to why they had been "taken at the prime of their lives".

Fr Manwel Agius, who delivered the homily, had a mammoth task trying to offer consolation to the suffering congregation.

Even Marco's father made a laudable attempt to fill everyone with courage. At the end of the Mass, he bravely addressed the crowd with a strong, unwavering voice, which could be heard via loudspeakers, across the square.

Speaking on behalf of the other parents, he said it was a special day for the boys in that they had been taken next to God to the garden of heaven. The bereaved father spoke of the big shock and panic early on Saturday morning when the families got the terrible news from the police and how no one wanted to believe that their sons had left their homes for the last time. The families went to the hospital to see their loved ones, but it was too late...

Mr Abdilla prayed God that He would welcome and take care of them and to Our Lady to bless them and welcome them in her house for "the great love they had for you".

Marco played in the band and his grandfather, who was instrumental in encouraging him to take up the trumpet, mustered the courage to play his own at the end of the Mass to honour his grandson. Engulfed in misery, friends also managed to pluck up courage to pay tribute to their loved ones at the end of the service - each to outbursts of heartfelt applause.

The five boys were always together, always smiling and bringing happiness wherever they went, a friend said. Their message was clear: "to make the best of every moment of our lives" came the words across the loudspeakers.

Speaking at "their last feast", Osvaldo's sister told the congregation that her brother and Christian had grown up together and were always laughing and joking, but also had ambitions: Christian wanted to become the captain of a ship, while Osvaldo, an IT student, was the best in class and dreamt of studying abroad.

Osvaldo was also a member of the Zghazagh Azzjoni Kattolika (Catholic Action Youth) and was being trained to be a leader for the Qrendi group because he had shown an interest in the role.

Those who knew the boys had only one word to describe them: "good". One woman said they were the "cream" of Qrendi and another elderly resident said that "if there were 20 good boys in Qrendi, these were five of them". The boys were also members of the youth committee of the band club Socjetà Muzikali Santa Marija, which, one mourner said, had "lost the best". They always stuck together and "Santa Marija took them together", she said.

Other members of the committee, shaking with sorrow, were unable to speak, but the person in charge of them, Frank Mifsud, said the boys were so enthusiastic, it was impressive. They were "motors", he said, stressing their high level of reliability and trustworthiness, which meant they were allowed to work alone.

"We had our last meeting three days ago and next week we were going to decide who would form the committee next year. The five boys were definitely going to be part of it," he said.

"They were the important ones and the committee has suffered a big blow... Everything is now at a standstill," Mr Mifsud continued, adding that one of the boys was the son of the club's secretary.

Teachers from St Joseph Junior Lyceum, who had taught Christian, Marco and David, reminisced about their pupils.

"David was an innocent boy," said the woman who taught him last year and clearly remembered him being "fidgety and humorous... always sporting a smile".

The five coffins left the church to bursts of applause and the solemn sound of the band. The funeral cortège headed for the Qrendi cemetery, where four of the boys were buried. Another was buried in Safi.

The procession was, at least, a 45-minute walk in the pounding heat through the village and to the cemetery - a long trail of coffins and mourners, which left the village deserted, desolate, silent and lonely.

The funeral was also attended by President Eddie Fenech Adami, Acting Prime Minister Louis Galea, Opposition Leader Alfred Sant and MPs.

The Qrendi local council and the Moviment Zghazagh Partit Nazzjonalista expressed their solidarity with the bereaved families, offering their condolences at such a difficult time and describing the deaths of the five boys as a "national loss".

The Qrendi youths were travelling in a van at about 12.45 a.m. on Saturday when for some reason it slammed into a wall on the recently rebuilt Rabat-Zebbug road, sending them flying out onto the road and killing them on impact. They were returning from a barbecue at Olive Gardens, in Rabat.