Poyntzpass remembered

Posted by Jim on March 4, 2018

One of the most shocking loyalist atrocities of the conflict — the
murders of two lifelong friends, one a Protestant, one a Catholic —
made headlines around the world 20 years ago this week.

The double murder by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) drew
international interest after it emerged Philip Allen and Damien Trainor
were from different religious backgrounds. They were killed on March 3
1998, just weeks before the Good Friday peace Agreement was signed.

The pair were sitting close to the door of the village pub in
Poyntzpass, County Armagh, when the gunmen burst in and ordered them to
lie on the floor, before killing them both. Two of Mr Allen’s brothers
were also in the bar when the gang struck but managed to escape with
their lives.

Loyalists Stephen McClean and Noel McCready laughed and joked in court
as they were sentenced to life for the savage murders, with a judge
saying it “will be remembered as one of the most heinous events in the
history of Northern Ireland”.

Ryan Robley also pleaded guilty to his part in the killings and was
given a long jail term, while a fourth man, suspected state agent David
Keys, was killed in jail by the LVF just days after the attack.

Bernie Canavan, now aged 84, was behind the bar in her family’s pub that
night. She recounted how two masked gunmen rushed in and opened fire,
striking the frame of a door as she made her escape.

“It wasn’t long till they started to shoot,” she told the Irish News.

“They said ‘lie down’ but then they just started to shoot and I ran up
the stairs – they take you into the living room where my husband was.

“I ran in and I turned off the lights.”

She believed at the time she might have been the target of the killers.

“I thought they were going to follow me, I don’t know why, it must have
been the first reaction – it was me they were looking for.

“I didn’t even think who they were, it’s just I thought they were going
to follow me with these guns. I went to turn off the lights and I said
‘They are shooting, they are shooting in the bar’.”

After returning downstairs a short time later she said there was a lot
of panic.

“We thought the ambulance never would come,” she said. “I was up and
down to see was it coming. They actually said they didn’t die until they
were up the road but Damien must have been unconscious. He never spoke.”

Her son, former Armagh manager Brian Canavan, was training with the
squad when he got a call to tell him there had been a shooting at the
bar.

Mr Canavan says he has concerns about the circumstances of the attack,
especially around the role of David Keys.

“The bit I could never understand was the police had an informer in the
car,” he said.

“One of the drivers was an informer. He maintained he didn’t know where
they were going… so I don’t know what happened there. They knew the
car was stolen in Dromore two days before it.

“The police knew a whole lot afterwards when you started to quiz them,
not that they like to be quizzed too much, they knew a bit, they knew
there was something going to happen.”

He believes there are still questions that need to be answered.

“I suppose maybe the families don’t think the way I think but I would be
more curious – they had an informer,” he said.

“Then you see all these stories coming out now about collusion and
everything else you wonder to yourself, well, did somebody inside know
anything? You don’t know, you will never know because the informer was
killed in prison.”

Mark Thompson of Relatives for Justice, who has worked with families of
LVF victims, said it was “no coincidence that the formation of the LVF
occurred in the context of a wider securocrat agenda that was also
opposed to the peace process”.

“The securocrat agenda was largely driven by the tunnel vision of some
within the security, military and intelligence community that sought to
militarily defeat republicans rather than engage in the changing
political dynamic that the IRA ceasefire created.”

Philip Allen’s mother Ethel is the last surviving parent of the two men
who were killed. She said that she can never forgive the killers and
believes the men took part in the murders to clear a drug debt to the
LVF.

“I don’t know why they picked Philip and Damien but I was told that they
owed #1,000 for drugs and if they killed two Catholics that was their
bill paid for. And that came from a reliable source,” she said.

“But they didn’t kill two Catholics, they didn’t care. Why was them
boys’ two lives only worth #500? A life is worth a hell of a lot more
than that.”

She sid she wanted one question answered about the attack. “The pub was
full because there was sale on, there was plenty of other ones there –
why was it just them two?”