Dwayne O’Donnell

Dwayne O’Donnell 17 years, Cappagh, County Tyrone, shot dead by the UVF at Cappagh along with Malcolm Nugent, John Quinn and Thomas Armstrong, on 3 March 1991.

Mr O’Donnell, Nugent, and Quinn, were in a car returning from a Gaelic football match and had only pulled up outside a public house in Cappagh when a car containing a number of heavily armed UVF men also pulled up outside the same building. The gunmen immediately opened fire on the car. Two of the men were shot dead inside the car while Dwayne O’Donnell was shot dead as he fled the vehicle. The gunmen then approached the pub, and failing to get inside, fired through the windows killing Mr Armstrong. 

The weapons used by the gunmen were part of a huge haul of weaponry brought into Ireland from South Africa in 1988, by unionist/loyalist paramilitaries with the assistance of several British military agents and intelligence operatives. 

At an inquest for the victims held in 1994 the coroner rejected the statements of thirty-four local people who witnessed the shootings, and the suspicious activity by Crown forces before and after the shooting. Some of the information rejected revealed that British soldiers had visited the public house a week before the shooting and made drawings and diagrams of the layout of the interior of the building. The RUC said two of the weapons used in the killing were used previously in killings at Lurgan, Cookstown and Stewartstown; who the victims were was not disclosed. 

A British television documentary on Channel 4 ‘Despatches’, shown later in 1991, detailed extensive collusion between Crown forces and unionist/loyalist paramilitaries in the Cappagh and other killings. 

Because the three young men arrived at the scene on the spur of the moment it is unlikely they were the intended targets of the gunmen. It was believed the gunmen had intended to shoot a leading republican who visited in the public house.