THE people of Beara are showing their support for the family of Alexander ‘Sasha’ Vosniuk who died following a road traffic incident in Eyeries last Friday.
Within a couple of days, the community had pledged €12,000 as part of a GoFundMe campaign to pay for the funeral expenses and to fly Sasha’s father to West Cork for the funeral this weekend.
The local community also want to show their support for Sasha’s wife, Olena and their children, one of whom has a serious medical condition, because the community had taken this young family very much to their hearts.
As a firefighter and Sasha’s employer, Damien O’Sullivan, the owner of Beara Tyres, struggled to explain his own personal sense of shock and loss.
He told The Southern Star he had said ‘goodbye’ to Sasha at 6pm on Thursday evening, only to find him dead at 6am on Friday morning, after his vehicle hit a ditch and went into the river.
Damien said his grieving process is one thing but he, and the community, are trying to do whatever they can to help Sasha’s family.
‘What you have to realise is that Sasha’s first day here was working with me. And he would have been here one year to the day next Friday,’ said Damien.
‘Sasha – who was just 43 – and his family fled the war in Ukraine. He showed me videos of his own place, mangled.
‘It was a tough situation, but he and his wife, who is a solicitor, and are both highly educated, made a go of it,’ said his employer.
‘Sasha had a great way about him. You couldn’t excite him. He was just one of those guys. He’d bring in cake his wife had made, and you could have the craic with him.
‘As a couple they were great community people and would do things like clean the school for free,’ said Damien.
‘The tragedy of it is that his own brother died in a car crash 10 years ago, so it is important to fly his father in for the funeral, the cost of which will also be borne by the money raised.’
Damien described the site of the road traffic incident as hazardous, especially at times of heavy rain.
‘It’s a bad turn,’ he said. ‘There have been a load of crashes there.
‘This will take some time to process,’ he added. ‘To find him 12 hours later in the river, under the van, got me bad, and it will be with me for a long time.’
Damien thanked Sasha for his friendship and he thanked the emergency services, including his colleagues in the fire brigade, as well as the Coast Guard and the ambulance service for the manner in which they dealt with such a difficult call out.
