As actor Jessica Falkholt continued to fight for her life in Sydney’s St George Hospital this morning, three of the most important people in her life were laid to rest just 14km away.
Parents Lars and Vivian Falkholt and their daughter, Annabelle, were farewelled by hundreds of family members and friends at St Mary’s Catholic Church, Concord, before a private internment.
Photographs taken at the ceremony show mourners clad in black, huddled around three hearses. In each, a coffin adorned with roses and lilies – pink for the 21-year-old, white for her parents.
Today’s funeral comes 15 days after the Falkholts were involved in a horrific collision near the town of Sussex Inlet on the NSW south coast. The Ryde-based family had reportedly been on their way home from a Christmas getaway when their Mazda slammed head-on into a 4WD drive on the Princes Highway.
Lars, 69, and Vivian, 60, were pronounced dead at the scene, while their two daughters were pulled from the wreckage shortly before it erupted into flames.
Annabelle, a digital marketing assistant, was airlifted to Liverpool Hospital with critical injuries. She died there three days later.
Her older sister, who played Hope Morrison on long-running television soap Home and Away, is reportedly in a coma, having undergone multiple surgeries, including the removal of a kidney and a portion of her skull. A hospital spokesperson said the 29-year-old remains in a critical condition.
Speaking to the congregation this morning, Mrs Falkholt’s brother, Paul Ponticello, thanked the brave motorists for risking their own lives in an attempt to save the women.
“(It’s) a day that will be difficult to erase from our memory,” he told the service.
Top Comments
I feel so sad for the little family that a useless moron detroyed. Words fail me. We have such drop kicks in our society. His mother said he didn’t like people talking about him, poor diddems, if he acted like a responsible adult maybe people would have no cause to talk about him. It was just disgraceful that he was behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Until the police come back with the findings Suzanne you don't get to pass judgement about what happened. What we need to address is the amount of people that are killed on our roads every year & the fact that nobody & I mean nobody actually passes comment on huge amount of people that don't get to come home to their loved ones. Just because an actress in a tawdry local soap happened to be in the accident this doesn't give anyone the right to pass comment. Until we start having a discussion on the high death toll compared to anything else in this country, I'm sorry but really nothing else really matters. RIP Jessica.
My sentiments have zero to do with the fact she was an actress, I don’t recall saying anything about that. I feel for a family decimated by yet another idiot. It is already known that he crossed to the wrong side of the road, it doesn’t take long to ascertain that. The reason in my opinion that this case has had attention is NOT because of her occupation but because a whole family has been eradicated. It is always extra shocking when that happens. This is certainly not the first time a whole family has been wiped out and the other cases got attention at the time also. It is you that assumed it was due to her occupation, I haven’t even seen her in any show. My anguish was for ‘a family’ wasted. Why do people twist what others say???
This is so unbelievably tragic and sad, that it's difficult to even know what to say, a beautiful loving family gone in an instant; and my heart breaks for the girl left behind and still in a critical condition.
Puts a lot of things in persoective.