Eamonn McCormick

Eamon McCormick

Eamon McCormick 17 years, Glenalina Road, Ballymurphy estate, West Belfast, shot and seriously injured on Halloween night 1971, by members of the British Army's Parachute Regiment. He died in hospital nearly three months later on 16 January 1972. 

Eamon McCormick was the third youngest in a family with 9 children. He attended St Aidan's Primary School and later St Thomas' Secondary School. He was a lad who took a keen interest in all forms of sporting activity and played for his school hurling and football teams. He was also a member of the Rossa GAA Club on the Falls Road and played for the minor teams, which won the hurling and football leagues in the 1970-71 seasons. Because of his ability he was selected for the GAA County Antrim minor panel. 

When Eamon left school at 15 years he started work in a timber yard in the city. He was not working there long when he was intimidated out of his job by unionist/loyalist workers there. 

On Halloween night 1971, Eamon and his girlfriend decided to go to a dance at St Peter's School Hall in Britton's Parade, which was not far from his home. 

The dance was organised to raise money for the relatives of two sisters, Dorothy Maguire and Maura Meenan, who were shot dead by British soldiers on 23 October 1971. Both women were killed and several others wounded, when the car they were travelling in was fired at without warning in the Clonard area of West Belfast. The women had been involved in alerting the community in their area of an imminent raid by British troops. Internment without trial was at its height and such raid operations were frequent occurrences in nationalist/republican areas. 

Shortly before Eamon and his girlfriend reached St. Peter's Hall several unionist/loyalist gunmen opened fire from the roof of a building over looking the streets around the hall. Soon after this British army paratroopers tried to force their way into the hall. Young people already in the hall reacted by barricading the entrance. Rubber bullets were fired at the youths inside the hall, who resisted with chairs, while other youths attacked the paratroopers on the street outside. 

Eamon, his girlfriend, and a male friend were going down a street towards the hall when they saw the trouble outside and decided for safety's sake to go into a house in the street to wait until things had settled down. The three friends were in the house for sometime until, thinking it was safe, they came out. However, as they walked down the pathway of the house a single shot rang out. Eamon, who had just reached the garden gate at the end of the pathway, was seen to stumble and fall. His two friends initially thought there was nothing seriously wrong with him and told him to get up, but he was unable to. An ambulance was called and Eamon was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital where it was found he had been shot once in the abdomen. The lethal bullet, after it had ripping through Eamon's liver and shattering his spine, had pierced the exterior wall of a house next door to the one he left. Residents recovered it later. 

Residents in the house Eamon had just left and other eyewitnesses said the youth was not armed when he was shot, and the bullet that hit him was fired by a British soldier positioned on the roof of a timber yard less than 100 yards away. 
The British army Press Office released no statement concerning the shooting.

In the mid 1990s Eamon's elderly mother and father spoke to the Relatives for Justice about their son's death. Mrs McCormick said when she heard her son had been shot she immediately rushed to the RVH through a gun-battle that had erupted on the Springfield Road. She said that when she eventually reached her son his first words to her when he looked in her eyes and held her hand were, 'Ach mummy.' She was told soon afterwards by a doctor that her son's injuries were so bad there was no hope for him. 

She said her son suffered for 77 days before he died on 16 January 1972. He was unable eat, and was in constant pain, and his weight went down to below four stone before he died. She said all of the 77 days of his slow death were spent in the RVH, with herself or his father by his bedside. 

She said during one of her vigils at his bedside a British soldier guarding other wounded soldiers approached her. He left his beret and rifle in the Sister's Office before he came over to her. 

'Is that your son?' he asked. 
'Yes' she replied. 
'I am very sorry.' he said. 
'Well don't be, for it's not the first child and it won't be the last.' she replied. 

An inquest into Eamon McCormick's death was held nearly 2 years later. His father said he brought the bullet that killed his son, which had been given to him by residents, to the court. The bullet he said had been dug out of a wall in one of the bungalows facing the timber yard wall. Mr McCormick said that the top of the bullet was cut off taking away its point, like a dum dum round. He said when he showed the bullet to his solicitor before they entered the hearing he was told it was not relevant. He also said that a vital eyewitness who saw the paratrooper fire the fatal shot from the roof of the yard had gone to England live by that time and was unable to appear at the hearing. 

The jury passed a verdict of ''shot by persons unknown at a place unknown'. 

The McCormick family speaking to the RFJ said the fact residents recovered the bullet that killed their son suggested the RUC did not investigate the killing. None of the clothes their son was wearing on the night he was shot were ever returned to them. They also said they never received any compensation for their son's killing. 

On the subject of compensation the elderly Mrs McCormick, her anger and grief still much in evidence, told the RFJ, 'I did not want nothing from them. I did not want money for my son's life'.

No British Soldier was ever charged in connection with the killing Eamon McCormick.