He was a really good lad: Sophie's parents pay tribute to gamekeeper in gun tragedy

Alan and Katie Taylor said earlier this week that they had been immensely proud of their "beautiful, bright and bubbly" daughter, Sophie, who was tragically killed on Tuesday night when her boyfriend, Calum Murray, 18, accidentally discharged his shotgun in the cottage where they were spending the evening with another young couple.

The young gamekeeper then shot himself with the same weapon outside Blairnamarrow Cottage, ten miles from the Moray village of Tomintoul.

Sophie's mother told how the young couple, who met at the Highland Games in Tomintoul, had been "very sweet together".

And, speaking of her daughter's relationship with the young gamekeeper, she said: "She loved him."

Mr Taylor, who is head gamekeeper at the Delnabo estate on the outskirts of Tomintoul, said the family considered the incident to have been a "dreadful accident" and he had regarded his daughter's boyfriend as a "really good lad".

Yesterday, as the grieving parents of both teenagers were trying to come to terms with their loss, tributes continued to flood in to the two separate websites set up in memory of the couple.

More than 6,000 messages of sympathy and support have already been posted on Miss Taylor's dedicated website, while there had been almost 2,000 postings on the website established in memory of Mr Murray.

Prayers will be offered for both bereaved families at church services in Tomintoul tomorrow. And Moray Council confirmed yesterday that a private assembly will also be held on Monday at Speyside High School in Aberlour, where Miss Taylor was a fourth-year pupil.

Counselling and support will be made available at the school.

David Tierney, the headteacher, said: "A lot of pupils will be very upset by it. I think there are a lot of youngsters for whom an event like this is the first time they have experienced a loss like this and the first time they have had to come to terms with grief.

"But I am sure they will find a way through it and, with the support that is available, they will find the resilience to cope with what happened."

The Rev Sven Bjarnason, the Church of Scotland minister in Tomintoul for the past 21 years, will be taking part in Monday's assembly.

He said: "It is important that we are there to listen. There is very little that one can say at a time like this to begin with when everything is so raw and new. But we are there and we will listen."

Mr Murray, a trainee gamekeeper on the Glenavon estate, who was about to complete the first year of a two-year SVQ course in gamekeeping and wildlife management, was a former pupil of Alford Academy in Aberdeenshire.

Moira Milne, the headteacher at Alford, said: "Calum was a very likeable lad. He was very interested in gamekeeping from a young age and was somebody who would always stop to say hello in the corridor."

She added: "This news has come as a great shock to staff and pupils at the school, and our thoughts are with the families of both involved in the incident."

Alex Hogg, chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, said the "terrible tragedy" at Tomintoul had had a major impact on the employees of sporting estates throughout the country.

He said: "The gamekeeping community in Scotland is a very close-knit one and several generations of families are often involved in the profession, so there have been numerous calls to me and to the SGA office from other keepers and stalkers wanting us to pass on their sympathy to the families involved.

"It's a dreadful loss of two young lives and there's great sadness across Scotland. Like everyone else, I'm thinking about the families as they get through this awful time."