Geraldine McKeown

Geraldine McKeown 14 years, Mountainview Gardens, Upper Crumlin Road, north Belfast, shot and wounded in her home on 6 December 1976 by members of the UVF. She died in hospital two days later.

Geraldine McKeown was the youngest in a family with four children. She attended Holy Cross Girls Primary School at Ardoyne before going to Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School at Ballysillan, both in north Belfast. Known to her family and friends as Deana an older brother described her as an attentive pupil who was quite popular with the other girls. She was a very outgoing teenager who loved like many girls of her age going to discos. A young girlfriend speaking at the time of her death said Deana 'always had a smile on her face. She used to make an idiot of herself to make people laugh. She would say to people in bad form, "Would you smile and give your face a holiday." She used to take roses from the gardens and put them in her hair to let on she was a Spanish dancer.'

By December 1976 Deana’s three older brothers had all left home, leaving only Deana and her father and mother. Two of the brothers had gone abroad while a third was on remand in Crumlin Road Jail.

Some of the worst violence carried out by unionist paramilitaries over the last thirty or more years in the North of Ireland occurred during 1976 when they claimed the lives over 120 people, some 57 of them carried out in and around the north Belfast area.

The Mountainview district where the McKeown’s lived was mixed, which meant that both Protestant and Catholics lived there. This situation, and the fact that it lay close to a large unionist area led to frequent attacks by unionist murder gangs on Catholic families living there. In June 1976 two Catholic sisters were shot as they lay in their beds a short distance from the McKeown home. In December 1975, Christine Hughes, a mother of eight children, was shot dead by UFF gunmen who burst into her home at Mountainview Parade. She had been putting up Christmas decorations at the time and four of her children were in the house at the time. Because of the constant fear of attack many residents in the area barricaded themselves in their homes at night as a safety precaution. Although the McKeown family home was never attacked before December 1976 there had been numerous threats made against them before then.

On Monday evening 6 December 1976, Deana was at home with her mother and father, but she had planned to go out later with a girlfriend. Sometime around 7pm there was a knock at the front door and Deana, who was in a front downstairs room, being suspicious of callers peered through the blinds of a window there. She saw two men standing at the door; one carrying was an automatic pistol and the other a machine gun. Deana must have seen the weapons in the men’s hands as she immediately turned away from the window just as the man armed with the pistol fired two shots through it. The distance between Deana and the gunman was only several feet and both bullets hit her, one piercing the back of her head as she turned. The bullet passed through her head and came out the front. She fell to the floor unconscious.

The other man with the machine gun did not fire; his weapon apparently jammed. The two gunmen then ran to a waiting car driven by a third man. The vehicle was later found abandoned a short distance away at an entry off Somerdale Park. It had been taken from the home of its’ owner in Mountainview Way a short time before the shooting. The owner said he had been told by the gunmen not to report the matter for an hour.

A friend and neighbour of Deana’s hearing the shots ran out into the street to investigate and witnessed Mr McKeown shouting, “Get an ambulance.” The friend added ‘I was crying, and half the street were too. She was a friend of mine.’

When the ambulance arrived Deana was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital where she died two days later without regaining consciousness. During Deana’s struggle for life her mother remained constantly by her bedside. On the afternoon of December 8th both her parents were present at her bed when a doctor asked them to leave the room for a moment, as he had to examine her. Shortly afterwards he re-emerged and told them their daughter had died.

No organisation claimed responsibility for the child’s murder.

Deana was the fourth pupil from Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School to have been murdered by unionist paramilitaries. The others; Michelle Osborne (13) died after a no-warning car bomb attack at Hannastown in June 1974; Anne Magee (15), was shot and wounded in May 1976 in shop at Manor Street, she died two weeks later; and Carol McMenamy (15), shot as she stood outside the home of a friend at Newington Street in November 1976. She died the following day. The latter two killings also occurred in north Belfast.

Deana’s three older brothers all tried to attend her funeral. One brother who lived in England made it home on time, a second brother living in New Zealand could not get a flight home until after the event, while a third brother, on remand in Crumlin Road Jail was refused compassionate bail and could only catch a glimpse of her burial on a television set in the prison canteen.

The murder of their youngest child in her home and in their presence had a devastating and permanent affect on Deana’s parents, Patrick and Patricia McKeown. After the murder they decided to move into the relative safety of Ardoyne, but from that time onwards their health, both physically and mentally, deteriorated and both were put on medication to help them sleep and to deal with the trauma. Mr McKeown has since died, while Mrs McKeown, now elderly, is still on medication.

As for the RUC investigation into Deana’s murder, their detectives never visited the McKeown home after the evening of the murder. One of Deana’s brothers speaking to RFJ recalled the one and only time their family were contacted by the RUC in regards to the investigation was by telephone, when they rang to tell his parents that they were bringing in more men to help with the investigation. They were never contacted again.

An inquest into Deana McKeown’s death was held sometime in 1977. An RUC detective described the McKeown’s at the hearing as a respectable family. He said her brother’s name and address had appeared in the Press and on television a few days before the shooting as a result of court proceedings against him, adding it was possible that this fact was connected to the shooting. It was also revealed the gun used in the murder had a history of use by the UVF. When, where, or who the gun was previously used against were not revealed.

Deana’s brother who was in Crumlin Road Jail at the time suggested to the RFJ another possible reason for the murder of his young sister. ‘At this time a lot of relatives of prisoners complained of being followed back to their homes after visiting relatives at the jail. Deana told me that she been followed on several occasions and had seen strangers in cars outside our house in the weeks leading up to her murder but she never told our parents as she did not want to worry them unduly.’ The last time Deana visited her brother was only two days before her murder.

No one has ever been charged in connection with the murder of Geraldine McKeown.