We still need answers over that day, says relative
VICTIMS of one of the most notorious IRA bombings of the Troubles have said they are still awaiting proper justice.
Charlie Butler (64) scrambled through the rubble of Frizzell’s fish shop along with hundreds of others searching for the wounded after the Shankill bomb 25 years ago.
He later discovered his niece, her partner and her child, aged just seven, had died.
Bomber Sean Kelly walked free from prison early as part of the Good Friday Agreement. He served less than a year in jail for every life he ended.
IRA man Thomas Begley died in the blast.
Mr Butler said: “We did not get justice when a man who walked past women and kids into a shop to blow people to bits did a couple of years in jail and walked out, never to be repentant.
“Who drove them there, who made the bomb, who gave the orders?
“Maybe if we got those questions answered, maybe then things could settle a bit. We have moved on, we want to move on.”
Mr Butler said of the bombers: “I think lunatics is the name for them, I don’t think you could describe them as anything else.”
He had hoped it would be the end of the bloodshed.
But it continued a few days later when UFF terrorists opened fire in the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, killing eight people.
The victims of the Shankill have shared their grief with others caught up in atrocities.
Mr Butler said: “We have told each other it was not done in our name, and what we are saying is, if it was not done in our name, then whose name was it done in?
“We were both sides of the community here, Catholics and Protestants, whose name was it done in, why was it done?
“Those are the answers we want.”
He recalled the day of the Shankill bombing in 1993, when he was running a taxi company.
“I got to the bottom of the street and within seconds saw nothing but clouds of dust and smoke.
“I saw a girl lying in the middle of the road with really bad head injuries and other injuries.
“I ran over and there were people attending to her.
“I looked over to where Frizzell’s shop was, through the dust and smoke, and saw nothing except ruins.
“It just looked as if the whole shop had come down on top of anyone that was there.”
His instinct to help kicked in. “I, along with hundreds of other people, got on the rubble, climbed through it,” he said.
“Unfortunately we knew there were fatalities because as I was digging I came across the body of little Leanne Murray, a 13-yearold schoolgirl. I am not a medic but I knew nothing could be done.”
He helped carry her on a stretcher to an ambulance, noticing another three bodies inside the vehicle.
He later realised his niece Evelyn Baird (27), her partner Michael Morrison and her child Michelle Baird were missing.
They had been ordering a wreath for Mr Morrison’s father, who had sadly died just days earlier.