LISTEN: Mother's plea after dead baby's ashes stolen

By Simon Hunter

"It was hard enough to go through stillbirth, but this feels worse."

The words of a heartbroken mother, whose baby daughter's ashes were stolen in Belfast.

Child Holly died 33 weeks into Claire Smallwood's pregnancy.

Her cremated remains were in a small plastic bag, and taken by thieves.

It happened in the Ballygomartin Road area between 6:30 and 9:15 on Tuesday night.

Claire had gone to her mother's house for most of the day, and then headed to the shops.

She had returned to her north Belfast house later to get her 12-week-old baby Jonah's bottle.

After having discovered a mess in the house, Claire and her partner Patrick Mulholland were unsure as to what had happened.

Their initial suspicions were that they had perhaps been taken by a family member-as there were intentions to get the ashes turned into jewellery-but this was confirmed to not be the case when they spoke to relatives on the phone.

They spoke to Q Radio News:

Inspector Paul Noble said, "Understandably, this has left the victim extremely distressed, therefore, we are appealing to whoever entered the property last night to please do the right thing and return the bag to police."

"We are also appealing to anyone who was in the Ballygomartin Road area last night between 6:15pm & 9:30pm and noticed any suspicious activity, or anyone who knows anything about this burglary, to contact police at Tennent Street on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference 1338 of 12/12/17.