It is thirty years today since two policemen were shot dead by IRA gunmen who ran up behind them in Belfast city centre
On the morning of Saturday June 30 1990, two policemen were shot dead in the centre of Belfast.
Harry Beckett and Gary Meyer were community beat constables who were walking from Castlecourt to Queen Street, which had a police station, when two gunmen ran up and tried to try to shoot them in their heads.
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Hide AdThe pair were at an unmanned security barrier at the junction of Castle Street when they were killed.
Mr Beckett, aged 47, seems to have become aware of the attack and got into a struggle with the gunmen, before being forced to his knees and shot in the face, dying instantly. Mr Meyer, 35, was shot in the side of the head and died later that day.
The method of killing, running up from behind, would be repeated by the IRA in Lurgan seven years later to the month, when Constables John Graham, 34, and David Johnston, 30, were shot on foot patrol — the last RUC officers murdered by republicans in the Troubles.
By summer 1990, Belfast city centre had become a largely normal business and trading space, in comparison to the 1970s when it was cordoned off due to a sustained IRA bombing campaign.
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Hide AdThe News Letter wrote about the killings of Harry Beckett and Gary Meyer in 2015, on the 25th anniversary. A witness, who worked near the attack, told us they heard what they thought was a car backfiring, and arrived on the scene seconds later.
The witness, who did not want to be identified, never saw the gunmen but saw one officer on the ground and the other slumping to the ground down the security railings — Mr Meyer, who died at 3pm.
The witness said that a woman, whom he believed to be from the Falls and was often in the Castle St area, held on her lap the head of the officer who was alive, and tried to stem his wound. “I remember her saying: this is someone’s son.”
The witness said other people stopped out of concern, and did not walk on past, despite it being a part of the city centre that marks the edge of republican west Belfast. The witness was familiar with some of the bystanders, and thought they were from the west.
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Hide Ad“People were looking around as if to say, where’s the ambulance? Where is medical help?... I ran in and got a towel, which the woman put to the back of his head.”
But when we published that report, another witness contacted us, saying in fact that she had been the person who tended to Gary Meyer.
Today we publish for the first time the recollections of that day of Elizabeth McQuillan, a housewife from east Belfast.
She had taken her two sons to the Faith Mission bookshop in Queen Street, which had relocated to its present location near Castle Street. Her sons were looking at music and she at books when they heard shooting.
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Hide Ad“I ran to the door and looked out up the street in the direction I thought the shots were coming from,” Mrs McQuillan recalls. She looked to “the security barriers which were in place at the time but all I saw was people stand around with their umbrellas up. There did not appear to be any sign of panic or distress. To me it looked like they were waiting to see a parade”.
Then she saw a figure run from the direction of the Hercules Bar along Castle Street towards the junction with Donegall Place, and she ran closer to Castle St to see what was happening but “the figure had disappeared and everything seemed normal”.
[This could be linked to a reported aspect of the sequence of events that day, in which an off duty policeman is said to have chased after a suspect in the vicinity of the bar].
Mrs McQuillan continues: “Just then a guy came out of the pub and stood looking over in my direction and this drew my attention back to the barriers and I discovered the two policemen. One, who I now know to be Harry Beckett, was lying on the ground and was obviously beyond help. Gary Meyer was lying slumped up against the barrier with blood pumping from a hole in his face
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Hide Ad“As a member of St John Ambulance at the time, we had often practised for such situations and I knew I had to stop the bleeding. I ran over, got down beside him and, because I had nothing else to use, I placed my hand over the hole and pressed firmly down to try to stop the bleeding.”
She put her other hand to the back of his head. “I knew from my training how a bullet acts. I just stayed there keeping the pressure on his face and everything seemed a blur. I vaguely remember another policeman coming to retrieve his weapon and a priest praying over him.”
Mrs McQuillan says: “After some time, the ambulance came and someone told me it was OK to let go now as he would take over. For a minute I didn’t want to let go. I felt like I was in some sort of trance.”
One of her sons had seen the two felled policemen before she did and “because he was at that time in St John Ambulance cadets, thought he could help but it was obviously very stressful for him. I sent both of them back to the bookshop to wait for me”.
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Hide AdAfter our story in 2015 about the unidentified witness, Kathryn Johnston, daughter of Mr Beckett, told the News Letter it was comforting to learn “there were people who came to their aid and in the case of Gary hold his hand to the end”.
“I had thought that they had been left to die in the street, that no-one stopped. People were reluctant to give evidence, but perhaps that is because they were afraid and Belfast is very territorial.”
It might be that some bystanders were reluctant to get involved. Mrs McQuillan says that within a short time of the shooting “people went about their business as though nothing had happened”.
“I was standing there with Gary’s blood on my hands ... No-one came and asked if I was OK.”
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Hide AdAt the bookshop she asked if she could wash her hands. “Even there, although I got my hands washed, no-one appeared to be that bothered, it seemed as though it was just another day in Belfast.”
One witness who did give evidence back at the time of the inquest had seen the shooting, and described one of the two killers as “a short man with dark eyes ... holding on to the shoulder of the constable while putting a gun to the back of his head”.
This appears to have been the man who shot Mr Meyer, who died at 3pm that day.
The killings were on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph, then an evening paper, that Saturday afternoon. The News Letter, always a morning paper, did not have another edition until the Monday. On July 4, we reported that police were hunting a “psychopathic IRA killer who specialises in close-up murders”.
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Hide AdBishop Cahal Daly of the Roman Catholic church said that the two RUC men were liked in the Castle Street area, and their murders were “depraved and wicked”.
The BBC in 2015 reported that the guns used in the murders had been brought in for ballistics firing and then returned to an IRA arms dump in full working order. Former RUC officers bitterly reject the report. We understand they complained to the BBC about it and still feel that the matter is unresolved.
Ms Johnston was interviewed for the programme.
In 2018, she wrote an essay for our Stop The Legacy Scandal series (see link below), describing how, as an only child, the 1990 murder of her father soon made her an orphan.
“A week or so after his death two representatives from the RUC widows’ association arrived. My mum, then aged 47, told them politely she didn’t want to be a widow.”
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Hide AdMs Johnston says: “Aged 17, I did not understand why she said it at the time. Now that I am approaching her age, I do understand why she said that.”
The widowed Isobel Beckett stopped eating. Her daughter says: “Sure enough, less than six months later, she died of a broken heart.”
Later both Harry and Isobel’s mothers died too.
“Both of my grandmothers died within years of the killing and neither recovered from seeing their child and their child’s spouse die in quick succession,” says Ms Johnston.
After our 2015 stories, the News Letter was also contacted by phone by a man who identified himself only by a first name and made claims about the shootings.
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Hide AdThey were, he said, carried out by two “very dedicated” hitmen who were “dangerous and continue to be”, having since become dissidents.
The murders, he said, were committed when “negotiations were taking place, and should not have happened”.
Asked who he was, the caller replied: “I support the peace process, I don’t support these two guys.”
No-one has ever been convicted of the killings.