Tragic mystery of Lockerbie baby which haunted policeman for 30 years

The youngest police officer at the scene of the Lockerbie bombing has been haunted by a single image for almost 30 years since.

Colin Dorrance, then 18, saw a farmer driving a pick-up truck carrying debris from Pan Am 103 and, in the front seat, was the body of a young girl.

The body was placed at Lockerbie town hall, which quickly became a makeshift mortuary for the victims as they were found.

Mr Dorrance has never forgotten the child who was brought to him by the farmer.

He had carried the child into the town hall, reports the BBC.


The now-retired police officer said: "It was the body of a child he’d found in a field at the back of his farm.

"It was a young child under the age of five. It looked as though they were asleep, it wasn’t obviously injured, and it was just a shock to realise it was a passenger from Pan Am 103.

"At the time it all happened so fast. There were hundreds of passengers brought into the town hall.

"It was just a case of moving on then, but in years since it was something that bothered me. It was such an extreme, intense moment."

For more than 25 years Colin has been haunted by that first victim he saw but he never pried or asked the farmer if he knew the details of the girl.


Since the terror attack Colin has formed a close bond with relatives of the American victims, taking them on tours of the area so they can better understand what happened to their loved ones.

On Friday, on such a trip, Colin discovered who the mystery child was.

He’d gone to the farm where the body of 21-year-old student Lynne Hartunian was found.

Colin said: "The farmer was there and it was his father who’d brought the child to the town hall.

"He said it was a child by the name of Bryony Owen who was 20 months old and it had affected his father very badly over the years.

"The mystery if that’s what you want to call it was laid to rest."

Bryony was travelling to the United States with her mother Yvonne Owen from Wales, to spend Christmas in Boston.

They were laid to rest in a single coffin in the Welsh village of Pendine in Carmarthenshire.

Colin, 48, is one of five men representing the emergency services who are taking part in a transatlantic fundraising bike ride to mark the 30th anniversary of the bombing, which killed 270 people in total.

On Saturday, accompanied by 70 supporters, they cycled from Lockerbie to Edinburgh Castle.

Speaking after he arrived at Edinburgh Castle, Colin told the BBC: "I was thinking about Bryony today.

"There’s just a sense of peace, a sense of conclusion to it.

"I now know the person I need to remember."

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