Danny McCooey

Roisin McCooey has a strong faith, a faith made all the more resilient by the British Army murder of her son Daniel. When she prays, she feels she's closer to the son who was 20-years-old when he died on May 20 1977, three weeks after being set upon by British soldiers in Castle Street, as he returned from a night out at a city centre snooker hall with a friend.
 
When you speak to Roisin she tells of her tremendous loss, the heartbreak, and the many happy memories she shared with Daniel when he was alive. If it wasn't for her faith, she says, she doesn't know how she would've got through the past 23 years, since that night when she and her husband Danny sat anxiously waiting for Daniel to return home, knowing that something had happened to their youngest of four children. 

Making his way home the night he was attacked, Daniel was hit when a British soldier in Castle Street became abusive and swung his rifle at his friend, the butt struck Daniel in the stomach, upon which he fell to the ground screaming in pain. Both lads were thrown into the back of Land Rovers and taken to the barracks in the Grand Central Hotel, where his friend could only listen to Daniel screaming from an adjourning cell. He would never see Daniel alive again. 

"Me and his father couldn't sleep, we knew something had happened," recalls Roisin. "We were terribly anxious and then at a quarter to five in the morning there was this banging at our Beechmount Pass door, and it was the RUC saying that Daniel had been involved in an accident and was in the Royal." The force of the strike from the rifle butt had collapsed Daniel's stomach and he had been taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital with internal bleeding.

"The Brits and the RUC had him at their mercy from after 11 o'clock that night to a quarter to five in the morning without coming to us and only God knows what he was going through. There was nobody there to stand up for him," says Roisin. 

When Mr and Mrs McCooey arrived at the hospital Daniel was in theatre. However, over the next two weeks his condition deteriorated, even though the doctors assured them that he would recover. When his condition refused to improve he was taken to intensive care where he eventually died. 

"Most of the time he was unconscious and every time I saw him I would burst into tears. He spoke briefly to his father and told him not to let the soldiers get away with what they did to him. He lay there with tubes coming out of him and it was a very, very harrowing and heartbreaking experience that we went through because he was very dear to us as he was our youngest son." 

Daniel was a loving son. From the time he was a child he was always bringing his mother presents. Roisin remembers a time not long before he was murdered when he grabbed her in the kitchen, swung her around and joked that he was never going to marry and was going to stay with her instead. A popular figure in the area, on the night of his death 500 people held a protest rally in Beechmount calling for an investigation into his murder, while hundreds came to his funeral. 

"His gestures of kindness I will never forget," says Roisin. "I know what it's like from a mother's heart when that coffin goes into the ground, your heart goes in along with it. I feel like a robot since he died. You may be talking away to people and going about your everyday business but there's a big gap missing in your life, it's as if a piece of your life's jigsaw is missing. 

"When he was in intensive care the endless hoping put a terrible strain on the family, and then there was the praying and hoping that everything would be all right and the hours of endless worrying that we went through. They were nightmare nights and days. 

"I see young men who look like him sometime and my heart jumps, or I'm at a wedding and I see a fella and I would think that I never saw my son get married. "When a child is born of you and you are so close to him because of that bond, then it is harder when he is taken away from you, only a mother knows that pain." Roisin says her thoughts are constantly with parents whose children have died as she knows their heartbreak. On Daniel's birthday, she always brings a birthday card to his grave. 

"My mother used to say to me that the graveyard was full with more people who died from heartbreak than any other illness, and she was right. There are so many people who couldn't go on after a loved one died, and not a time goes by that I don't think of Daniel because there is a tremendous gap in my life since he died. "We were very close and that's what made his death all the more difficult to bear." 

Three years ago Roisin's husband of 50 years, Danny died after a long illness. Now she says all she has are photographs and memories. When she lies in bed at night, she remembers the happy times spent together, the holidays and Christmases. She is quick to point out, however, that she is not the only one suffering and that the conflict of the last 30 years has left many people grieving. 

"There are times when I would be sleeping and I would dream that all the family are all around me, including Daniel and his father, and we would be having a good time. Then I would wake up and realise that it was only a dream. "That's known as a rude awakening and it can be a huge let-down when it happens, but I believe in the power of prayer, and when I pray I feel a strong bond with both Daniel and his father and I feel close to them. But I am not alone and there are thousands of other broken hearts out there.