Sapper Quinsey's funeral: Family, friends and colleagues bid farewell
Mar 19 2009 by Edward Chadwick, Birmingham Mail
THE sister of murdered Birmingham soldier Mark Quinsey branded his terrorist killers “cowards” at his funeral.
Hundreds of people lined the streets and burst in to spontaneous applause as the 23-year-old made his final journey to Immanuel Church, in Highters Heath.
Speaking during a moving hour-long ceremony, his sister Jaime said her family was struggling to come to terms with the death.
Reading a letter she had written to her brother, the 25-year-old said: “It breaks my heart to think that I will never see you again. What’s happened to you is just so hard for me to understand.
“You were the most caring, respectable young lad I knew. You did not deserve what those cowards did to you.”
Sapper Quinsey was shot dead along with colleague Patrick Azimkar outside the Massereene Barracks in Antrim as they collected pizza on March 7. The pair had been due to fly to Afghanistan just days later.
Their colleagues from 38 Engineer Regiment carried the coffin past a guard of honour formed by members of the Royal British Legion and an eight-man firing party from Sapper Quinsey’s regiment.
Friends, family and church leaders from all Christian denominations in Ireland packed into the church.
Many wore small yellow ribbons in memory of the soldier.
