The 40-year-old Dutch tourist had travelled barely 400 yards in the direction of Enniskillen when the Seat Ibiza she was driving collided with a Toyota Landcruiser coming in the opposite direction. While police investigations are continuing the position of the two vehicles after the head-on crash would suggest she may have been driving on the wrong side of the road; on the right, as they do in her native Holland.

    Her young daughter, who had been sitting beside her in the front passenger seat, escaped with relatively minor physical injuries but was emotionally distraught. Yonna spent Monday night in the Erne Hospital being comforted by strangers, unaware that her mother’s body was lying in the morgue.

    Mother and daughter should have been flying home to Holland together on Tuesday at the end of their touring holiday in Ireland. Instead the dead woman’s sister, Niomi, was on her way to Enniskillen; her grim task, to identify the body and, grimmer still, to break the news to little Yonna that her mother was dead.

    Niomi had given an undertaking to Karin that if anything ever happened to her she would look after Yonna.

    “I’m sure she never thought she would have to live up to that promise,” said Inspector Ian Kennedy of the PSNI in Enniskillen. “The whole thing is heart-breaking, it really is.”

    As far as police can ascertain Karin and Yonna had been in Ireland for about a week. They were travelling in a Hertz hire car registered in Dublin and had toured in Galway and Sligo before arriving in Fermanagh. They spent Sunday night in a guest house overlooking Lower Lough Erne. They were due to fly back home from Dublin to Holland on Tuesday.

    As Karin negotiated a sharp right hand bend as one travels along the Lough Shore Road in the direction of Enniskillen the Seat Ibiza was in collision with a Toyota Landcruiser driven by local man Mark Rogers. The crash happened shortly after 10am opposite Erincurragh Cruising. Proprietor Charlie Parke was one of the first people on the scene.

    “I just heard the bang,” he recalled. “There would have been a fair impact because there was no sound of brakes, the squealing of brakes.”

    He went up to the road to warn approaching traffic that there had been a crash.

    “A doctor arrived by car and he treated the woman in particular; he was working on her,” Mr. Parke explained.

    In fact the doctor was an Australian tourist on holiday. He helped Yonna from the wreckage of the Seat Ibiza.

    “She was distressed and crying,” said Mr. Parke.

    The driver of the Landcruiser suffered shock and some minor injuries.

    Yonna was taken to the Erne Hospital. As she is unable to speak English a number of Dutch speaking nationals living in Fermanagh were called on for help, including local GP, Dr. Miriam Dolan, from Lisnaskea Health Centre, business couple, Mr. Frank and Mrs. Eleanor Peeters, from Ballindarragh, Lisnaskea, and Mrs. Ingrid Brownlee-Van Veen, from Newtownbutler. They tried to comfort and console the little girl while police contacted the Dutch Embassy and Interpol in order to track down her relatives. Karin and Yonna are from The Hague.

    Inspector Kennedy said: “Every fatal road collision is tragic and this one is no exception, and indeed has particularly sad consequences. It is particularly heartrending to think of this little girl, alone in a foreign country, in hospital, unable to understand the language.”

    He expressed his thanks to Dr. Dolan, Mr. and Mrs. Peeters and Mrs. Brownlee-Van Veen for their help.