Soldier said he wanted to ‘waste somebody’ before boy was shot

A SOLDIER in the Black Watch regiment said he wanted to “waste somebody” shortly before a teenager was shot dead in west Belfast, an inquest has heard.

Leo Norney, 17, was killed during the Troubles in the Turf Lodge area of the city in September 1975.

Soldiers from the Black Watch previously claimed that the youth was a gunman who had opened fire on them.

Local residents have always maintained that he was simply an innocent victim of an unprovoked attack.

The original inquest, in 1976, returned an open verdict.

On Monday, an Army veteran, referred to only as M2, told an inquest in Banbridge, Co Down, that the soldier had lied in his previous statements and his patrol had not been shot at on the day Leo was killed. He said he wanted Leo’s family to know the truth about what happened more than 40 years ago.

The bulk of his evidence centred on the actions of Cpl John Ross Mackay, who died in 2015. M2 said that after an attack on the soldiers’ base, in which no one was injured, he returned to his room. In a statement to the inquest, M2 said: “I recall him telling me that we were going to waste somebody tonight ....

“I immediately responded by saying I would not be involved in what he was suggesting and that he must be mad.”

In the statement, M2 said he did not recall Cpl Mackay saying who the target would be or where or how it would happen.

His statement went on to describe the events of the patrol before the incident in which Leo was killed.

The witness described his position at a security fence in west Belfast. He described how he glanced over to Cpl Mackay and saw him fire his rifle towards an area known as Shepherd’s Path.

M2 said Cpl Mackay fired two quick shots, followed by several further shots.

He said he did not recall hearing or seeing any other gunshots before Cpl Mackay fired his rounds, and said that he remembered being ordered to take cover at waste ground and hearing a person groaning from the direction of Shepherd’s Path.

“I looked towards the area the noise came from and saw a soldier who I recall being Cpl Mackay standing beside or on Shepherd’s Path.”

He said he saw a soldier, who he believed was Cpl Mackay, point his rifle towards the ground and fire one round.

He also recalled hearing the “thud” of Cpl Mackay kicking an unseen object on the ground.

Asked by Ian Skelt, the coroner, why he originally gave a false narrative of events, he replied saying that he was scared of Cpl Mackay.

“I had just seen what I had seen and I wasn’t going to put myself in a position of going out on patrol with someone who had did that.

“If he had done that to somebody that he didn’t know, what was the next thing?”

He described Cpl Mackay in his statement as a “violent and unpredictable person”.