Brian Duffy

Brian Duffy, 15 years, Wolfhill Avenue, Ligoniel, north Belfast, shot dead by UDA/UFF in a taxicab on the Ligoniel Road on 5 December 1993. John Todd, 31 years, a taxi driver was also killed in the attack. 

Brian had been a pupil at St. Gabriel’s Secondary School on the Crumlin Road and was due to sit his GCSE examination in the coming months. On the evening he was killed he was about to make a journey across town to Nazareth Lodge House where he was staying in temporary voluntary care. It was about 9pm when he got into a taxi outside a taxi firm on the Ligoniel Road. The vehicle owner John Todd was already inside. Moments later as both victims put on their seat belts another car pulled along side Mr Todd’s vehicle and two gunmen armed with an assault rifle and a pump-action shotgun opened fire. Brian Duffy died instantly and John Todd died on the way to hospital. Eyewitnesses said the gunmen’s car sped off up the Ligoniel Road, did a U-turn, and came speeding back down the road passed the murder scene and on to the Upper Crumlin Road. Another taxi driver tried to ram the gunmen’s car as it came back down the road but it swerved and avoided him. 

At the time of the shooting a Royal Ulster Constabulary mobile patrol was parked only a short distance from the murder scene in an armoured vehicle at Leginn Street, a cul-de-sac, running directly off the Ligoniel Road. The gunmen’s getaway car raced passed the mouth of Leginn Street twice when making their escape. 

In a statement issued later it was reported the RUC members inside the parked vehicle had said they heard the shots but could not ‘pin-point’ the location of the shooting or intercept the killers. The RUC said the patrol in Leginn Street was checking for a stolen vehicle when they reported hearing shots and responded. Members of the patrol said the only speeding car they saw was the one carrying an injured man to hospital. 

What the statement did not revealed was that the patrol stopped the vehicle with the injured man, John Todd, inside. As stated, he died on the way to hospital. 

The car used by the gunmen had been hijacked in the Ballysillan area by a number of masked men who took over the house of the car owner at 8.40pm. It was found abandoned afterwards in the Silverstream area. Both areas are in north Belfast. The UFF claimed responsibility. In 1991 the same taxi firm had another driver, Kevin Flood, shot dead by the UVF at the same spot. 

An inquest into the murders of Brian Duffy and John Todd was held in November 1994. It was revealed that the pump-action shotgun used fired solid bore rounds, causing horrific injuries to both victims. No details were given as to the make of the other weapon used, however from eyewitnesses descriptions and the number of shots fired it would appear to have been an assault rifle. An RUC detective said an RUC vehicle was in the immediate area of the shooting at the time of the incident dealing with another stolen vehicle and had relayed a message about shots being fired. 

Mr Duffy, Brian's father, was highly critical of the RUC behaviour after his son’s murder. He said he had not even been contacted by the RUC since he identified his son in the mortuary. ‘If I had had got a parking ticket I would have got more response from the RUC’ he said. The RUC detective said his officers had corresponded with the boy’s grandmother. 

The detective told the hearing no one had been charged with the killings.