The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The shoot-to-kill incidents generally tended to occur as a result of the mounting of stake-outs or checkpoints. After the fusillades died away it would be alleged that the dead had opened fire when challenged to put up their hands, or perhaps had driven past the checkpoints, firing at the security personnel, or somesuch. In any event, only insiders realised that the deaths resulting from these sanguinary encounters usually included prominent IRA activists such as a local OC, or a much-wanted sniper or bomber. Usually, but not inevitably. To give but one example: sixteen-year-old John Boyle, shot dead in broad daylight by the SAS on 11 July 1978, had nothing whatever to do with the IRA. He had entered a graveyard out of curiosity to examine an arms cache which his family had reported finding to the police. Although he then went on to acquit the soldiers involved Mr Justice Lowry found, on 4 July 1979, that after the teenager’s death the soldiers had emptied the contents of the bag containing the guns on to the ground to make it appear that the lad had been shot moving the cache. The judge said: The Army and Soldier A [in such cases it is common practice to refer to soldiers by letters of the alphabet only, so as to protect their identities] and the patrol gravely mishandled the operation because they shot an innocent boy who, whether he was holding a gun or no, had no capacity to harm them.