Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My grandchildren will know difference between good & evil. They’ll not destroy lives.. They’ll never be the reason for that question... WHY?
Widow’s pledge 10 years after cop’s murder
IT took only the slightest movement to change the world 10 years ago – the deadly and deliberate squeeze of a trigger.
In an instant PSNI officer Stephen Carroll was shot in the head, the bullet memorialising him as the first member of the service to be murdered.
It was, according to then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a murder intended to “distort, disrupt and destroy a political process”.
It did indeed distort, disrupt and destroy, but the victim was not the peace process – it survived intact.
The victim was Steve Carroll and everyone his life had touched before calculated evil sent him to his grave aged 48.
For Steve’s wife Kate, his death would forever leave life distorted and twisted out of shape.
It destroyed their family’s world, devastated friends and Steve’s colleagues’ fragile hopes for survival under the scrutiny of wicked men were disrupted and diminished.
Today as Kate Carroll marks the 10th anniversary of that evil, she pledged only to remember the good.
But it is a battle like no other for time has not been a healer for her. In fact every year seems to get worse.
Love has trapped Kate deep in despair, and although she is surrounded by people she adores, she remains heartsore and lonely.
Today she is still asking why, and has no good answer.
Kate said: “I remember my granddaughter coming into the conservatory with a photo of Steve. She was just three. She said, ‘Nanny, where’s my pappy?’
“I told her, ‘Pappy is up in heaven.’ She asked me why. I said he was in Heaven because he was taken away.
“She said, ‘Who took him away? I said, ‘Bold men.’
“And she asked me, ‘But why?’ The purity of her question was so innocent.
“I had no answer. There aren’t any good answers. I took her to the graveyard and she put a wee rose on Pappy’s grave. She never got to meet her grandfather and she never will. It’s so sad to think she was denied all his love.
“So I try to document everything and put it into a scrap book for when they my grandchildren are older.
“They’ll understand the difference between good and evil. They’ll not destroy lives. They’ll never be the reason for anyone’s question.. why?”
Constable Steve Carroll was shot dead on March 9, 2009, two days after the Real IRA murders of Sappers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey outside their Antrim barracks.
Every police officer in Northern Ireland was and remains a potential target for dissident republicans.
But at 9.45pm, Steve’s life chances collided; his name amongst thousands on a mammoth police duty rota, his drive to answer a call from the public, a moment sitting in a car.
YESTERDAY
Seemingly minor decisions were suddenly on a fatal collision course.
He was targeted as he answered a call from a terrified mum whose house in Lismore Manor, Craigavon, had been attacked.
The Continuity IRA smashed her window to lure officers to the area, then they waited for their prey, took aim and squeezed the trigger. As Steve sat in the driver’s seat of his unmarked gold Skoda Octavia, two shots rang out.
One of them passed through the back windscreen and struck him in the head. He died instantly.
The recoil from the killer’s gun was followed by the recoil felt by the decent folk of Northern Ireland, those who tried to keep Kate going in her darkest of days, and the rest who strived for normality as news of murders rained down on them.
Kate, 68, finds it hard to believe she has lived a decade past that moment.
She said: “I’ve done 10 years without Steve, I’ll maybe have an other 10 to face and possibly another 10 after that which is just an unbearable thought.
“I’m alone in my head reliving the past, saying this time 10 years ago Steve and I were doing this, planning that. It just never seems to end.
“I’ll never make sense of what happened, but I still have to put my feet on the floor and get out bed every morning.
“So I have to be determined to live in hope. But it’s hard, so very hard.
“People ask me how I forgive what