Thousands mourn prison guard
IRA blamed for shooting
COOKSTOWN Thousands of mourners lined the main street of a central Northern Ireland town Tuesday to bid farewell to a prison officer slain by Irish Republican Army militants, the first killing of a guard in nearly two decades — and a reminder that the British territory’s peace is not yet complete.
David Black, 52, was shot several times from a passing car as he drove to work at Northern Ireland’s main prison. His car went off the road and landed in a ravine.
No group claimed responsibility, but police and politicians have pinned it to an IRA splinter group based in the nearby town of Lurgan. That faction has been blamed for dozens of shootings and bombings since the 2007 formation of Northern Ireland’s unity government — the central achievement of a two-decade peace process.
Although that coalition of British Protestants and Irish Catholics has thrived, Northern Ireland at grassroots level remains a bitterly divided land.
Black’s family asked politicians from the major Catholic-backed party, Sinn Fein, to stay away from Tuesday’s Protestant service. Sinn Fein for decades was the public face of the Provisional IRA, the major anti-British paramilitary group that killed nearly 1,800 people, many of them from the province’s Protestant majority, before renouncing violence and disarming in 2005.
An honour guard of prison officers in dark-blue uniforms carried Black’s coffin down the broad main street of Cookstown. Family members then carried it into a small Presbyterian church, accompanied by a bagpiper’s lament. The casket was covered in a Union Jack flag and topped by Black’s service cap and a single white rose.