FOLLOWING the death of their nine-year-old son following a car accident, a Glasgow couple decided that the boy’s father would commit suicide in order to be with the child, and take care of him.
Nine-year-old Connor Hogg, according to this report, was travelling with his parents on a fishing trip to the Trossachs when the accident took place.
Connor and his dad Allan
Said Kelly Hogg, 31:
Allan took his own life and died happy and content knowing that he was going to see his son again and that he would be there to look after him. It also gave me some comfort that my wee boy was with his daddy, who loved him more than anything in the world, and he wasn’t out there all alone.
She added:
I know it might sound strange to some people but when you are about to lose a child you love more than anything in the world, you want to do everything in your power to protect them. If that means taking you own life, then that is the sacrifice we decided to make.
Connor was seriously injured in the crash on August 2 last year. The couple kept a vigil at his hospital bedside for six days before making decision to switch off his life support machine. Mrs Hogg said she and Allan had prayed at his bedside for a miracle.
My wee boy was alive for six days and during that time we were at his bedside 24 hours a day. When we were told he was going to die we couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone, so we decided that one of us had to go with him. While we sat we had talked about who would go with him if he died.
Weeks later his dad, aged 30, strangled himself with a dog lead.
She added:
Allan insisted I should stay to look after our 13-year-old daughter Lauren and he should go. We tried to carry on for Lauren’s sake but it all got too much for Allan. When I heard he had died too, I screamed for about five minutes but then I felt a strange sense of comfort knowing that Connor wasn’t alone any more. I know that when he shut his eyes and died he knew that he was going to see Connor again.
Since her son’s death, Mrs Hogg has raised thousands of pounds for the Southern General Hospital where her son was treated, and for the air ambulance service.
Her daughter Lauren left a tribute to her father on the gonetoosoon website, saying:
It made me and my mum feel happy dad’s with Connor and I’m with mum. You will always be in my heart dad, and you Connor. Forever and ever.
Hat Tip: Steuart Campbell
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
December 24th, 2009 at 11:59 am
This is almost too sad to take in! There are some sensible comments on the Daily Record site, so there’s no point adding to them really. The most touching concerns the seven-year-old boy who was so upset upon reading about this that he gathered up all his Christmas presents and asked for them to be given to the children in the hospital. I often thought when I was teaching that the kids showed more maturity than their parents!!
December 24th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
This is unbelievable; I know there used to be religions where some people were given company – usualle servants – when they died, and the company was usually killed for that purpose. But in this day and age?
December 24th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I feel so, so sorry for the 13-year-old daughter. She will grow up totally indoctrinated. One can only hope that she will see the light eventually.
I lost my only daughter ten years ago. The pain in seeing one’s child suffer and finally die is unbearable. I, too, felt like committing suicide – I actually had a handful of sleeping pills in my hand, but the thought of my family’s double suffering made me see sense.
December 24th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
This report arouses conflicting emotions in me.
A deep sense of sorrow for the mother and daughter left, combined with biting anger at the harm that believing in nonsense can, and sometimes does, do.
David B
December 24th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Sad though it is that the son died, sadder still the father won’t know that his suicide was pointless. Religion eh?
December 24th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
If you feel that you need cheering up after reading this sad tale, all you have to do is to visit YouTube and ask for “I’m Yours (ukulele)”. It’s a little Japanese boy playing his uke (rather too well for my liking, I’m afraid!), and, although the word “cute” is rather overused for this type of thing, I’m sure you will all agree that it’s brilliant!!
December 24th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I think grief probably played a greater part in this than religion. It’s utterly tragic. I don’t think any of the people concerned were in their right minds, and understandably so.
December 24th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Come on! Why would somebody in Heaven need somebody to take care of them? What really motivated the suicide was despondency. Which is tragic enough and shouldn’t be disparaged, despite the silly justification for the suicide.
December 24th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I wonder how religious nutters who’d normally go on about “the sanctity of human life” will respond to this particular example of voluntary euthanasia? Hopefully they’ll be quiet, reconsider their position, and some good will have arisen from this desperately sad story.
December 24th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I can’t imagine that they would try to justify it, Robert. Like @mikespeir, I don’t think you can really blame “religion”, as such, for this one – although silly ideas about “life after death” are obviously in play here. This is really the result of overwhelming grief, and a totally inappropriate way of dealing with it: something that society should have been helping these people with.
December 24th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Got an error message:
Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to twitter.com:80 (Connection refused) in /home/mckeegan/public_html/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 1142
So just what, exactly, is being snooped upon?
December 24th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
This is just so sad… seriously, I can’t bring myself to bring my usual jaundiced view to bear on it…
But as other people have noted, suicide is a sin, and (according to some theologies) part of the fun of being in heaven is watching the torment of the sinners in hell, so at this moment little Connor has a grandstand view of…. what, exactly?
Anyway, have a good holidays, everyone, better than the poor bastards in this story will be having.
Saturnalia Felix omnibus, and all that…(I can hear the church bells ringing across the valley in the snow-covered German hill town where I`m staying as I type these words. Lovely.)
December 24th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
This is so sad, seems to be another strike against religious belief. I wonder if a cult of Elvis fans would ever consider committing suicide to be with their king.
December 24th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Really sad.
December 24th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
The liturgical death-eaters who keep pitching a fictional belief in a wonderful heaven should be arrested for aiding and abetting this suicide. This story is of course a double tragedy, but the father is not blameless. It takes an utter lack of critical thinking skills to kill yourself because an incomplete text of an ancient desert cult declares that your soul will go to “heaven,” which is never defined. Isn’t suicide a rather serious sin in Christianity? If so, the son may now be singing the praises of god in heaven, but Dad won’t see him until the first snowfall where he’s staying.
December 24th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
@featheredfrog
Snoopy is a PHP library for doing web page requests. In this case, it’s trying to connect to twitter’s website, probably for a list of recent activity on a keyword, or an account stream.
Being twitter, the request of course failed, and an error message came up. It’s not anything nefarious, search for snoopy.php for information on what it does.
Putting an @ before the line of code requesting the connection will suppress the error message.
December 25th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Three friends die in a car crash, and they find themselves at the Gates of Heaven. Before entering, they are each asked a question by St. Peter himself
“When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning upon you, what would you like to hear them say about you?” asks St. Peter .
The first guy says, “I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor and a great family man.”
The second guy says, “I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in our children.”
The last guy replies. “I would like to hear them say…. LOOK !!! HE’S MOVING!!!!!”
December 27th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
This story is so unbelievably sad! What some people will do in the muddle-headed times of dreadful tragedy: take an action that effectively doubles UP on the tragedy. As nonsensical and tragic as that is, it IS consistent with the Christian “concept” of death being a journey to “everlasting” something or other. Atrocious!
December 27th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
lulz.
December 29th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
is it just me that someone so stupid is now unable to reproduce, that has to be a good thing surely.
and lying next to each other in 2 6 foot holes doesnt really mean you are together does it, all it means is more food for the worms!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
I miss Connor Hogg so much
He’s my second little cousin and i loved him
me & the class are missing you connor
g.b.n.f Connor Hogg r.i.p always in our hearts
if i had a kid and he/she died i would have done the same.
February 19th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Any of yous who say anything about theyr religion is sad because if you had met Connor you would’ve seen how kind he was, he was only nine and yes what Connor may have seen from heaven might have been sinful but Allan only wanted to be with his son, and i would do the same to be with mine. Many people from school miss him to
everybody was crying for him:(. I had to go up infront of the whole school and his family (when his dad was alive) and say “Thank you for coming to the rememberance mass of Connor Hogg” As soon as i said that his mum burst into tears i couldn’t even talk when i sat down i was scared to cry:( but now im not im old enough to see that crying is okay and so is religion okay ? don’t slag people for theyr religion