‘Lyra’s killer is still free — but we are in prison’
There’s a street in Belfast that has a mural of journalist and campaigner Lyra McKee — shot dead by the New IRA in Derry in April 2019 — and features one of her inspirational quotes. It reads: ‘It won’t always be like this; it’s going to get better.’ Her epitaph preserved forevermore, but it didn’t have to be like this.
Born into a generation that was promised peace, the 29-year-old’s murder by, police believe, a suspect not even born when the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was signed, sickened the entire island of Ireland.
For her sister Nichola Corner-McKee, life isn’t getting any better two years on. “The night Lyra was killed, my soul jumped out of my body and it has never returned,” she says.
Last week, Nichola launched a new online campaign seeking justice for her sister on what would have been her 31st birthday and just over a year on from her mother’s death.
Joan Lawrie-McKee passed away weeks before the first anniversary of Lyra’s murder. “She used to say to me, ‘how am I going to do this — how am I going to live without Lyra?’ In the end, she couldn’t,” Nichola says. As her mother faded away after a period of ill-health, Nichola whispered into her ear: “When Lyra comes for you, I want you to go with her.” Moments later, she was gone.
“Mummy’s heart was the strongest organ she had, and it was her heart that stopped because it was broken. I know they are now together.”
But the memories of that night will never fade for Nichola and her siblings, Gary, Joan, David and Mary.
Rioting broke out in the Creggan
neighbourhood on April 18, with 50 petrol bombs, bricks and bottles hurled at police Land Rovers as a crowd gathered to watch. Lyra was one of several reporters to bear witness to the violence, not knowing that it would soon claim her life.
The disorder in the lead-up to Lyra’s murder appeared to be spontaneous. But in fact, it was staged for the benefit of an MTV documentary that was being filmed in Derry at the time. Its producers had no knowledge of the potential for violence, and later scrapped the project.
During a search of a house in the estate later that evening, messages about an increased police presence in the area began to circulate on social media and the rioting began. At 10.56pm Lyra posted a tweet with a photograph of the scene and the words, ‘Derry tonight. Absolute madness.’
Four minutes later she was shot in the head by a gunman holding a Hammerli X-Esse pistol which would be recovered hidden in a field a few miles away a year later.
In Belfast — 114km away — Nichola had just been celebrating her son Andrew’s birthday when her phone rang. It was Lyra’s partner Sara Canning, who told her she had been injured.
“I thought she’d been hit with like a brick or a bottle or something like that and would need stitches, so I’m waiting on more news,” says Nichola.
“I got fed up waiting, so phoned our Lyra’s phone because I thought she’d be sitting waiting on the doctor. The phone answered and I said, ‘Alright wee Lyra — has the doctor seen you yet?’ But it wasn’t her. It was Sara.”
At that moment doctors were working on Lyra, but it didn’t look good. Knowing it was a race against time, the PSNI had considered helping the family get to the hospital as quickly as possible. Then her phone rang again.
“It was Sara’s sister who said, ‘I have a policeman who wants to speak to you.’ I asked him, ‘Is my sister still alive?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you this but she has just passed away.’”
She remembers screaming with grief. And she can still hear her mother’s cry when she told her her daughter was dead. “That sound is the only thing that accurately describes that pain.” An hour later, Nichola and her family gathered in Altnagelvin hospital where Lyra’s body lay. The PSNI officers who had placed Lyra in the back of a Land Rover and rushed her there stood by the bed.
“Apart from some blood on her head and around her mouth, she looked like she was asleep. I just wanted her to wake up,” says Nichola. “I wanted to hug her, but I wasn’t allowed, so I sat down beside her and told everyone, ‘I am staying here until she wakes up.’ Of course, she didn’t.”
Six days later more than 1,000 people packed St Anne’s Cathedral for Lyra’s funeral, with hundreds more outside, as simultaneous vigils were held in Dublin, London and across Northern Ireland.
President Michael D Higgins and the then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar sat on either side of then British Prime Minister Theresa May, with Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney seated behind. Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, sat with Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill, the leaders of Sinn Féin at a time when the power-sharing Executive lay in tatters.
It was a testament to Lyra, who broke down barriers in life and in death. A Catholic whose funeral service was in a Protestant church and who united politicians of all backgrounds in grief. “It says a lot about her that she was able to do that, to have all of those people from different political persuasions in the one room. That was her, that was Lyra.”
While she mourns her loss, the
main suspect thought to have fired the gun in the murder is being protected, police believe, by the New IRA — a group of dissident republicans who oppose peace. “The person who killed my sister also killed our mother,” says Nichola. “That person still walks free while my family and I have a prison sentence hanging over us.”
Today the suspected killer, who sources have confirmed to this newspaper hid in Co Donegal following the shooting, is now believed to be back in Derry. For Nichola, she longs to look in the eyes the man who shot her sister dead and ask: “Why? Was it worth it? What did you achieve?”
The man is one of 17 suspects detectives are actively pursuing as they investigate every piece of footage from the night that changed everything in the region. It is a frustration for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, but “the resolve has never been as strong”, says Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy, who is leading the investigation.
“Lyra’s murder wasn’t just the actions of one individual,” he says. “There was a chain of events involving a significant number of individuals, including members of the New IRA, to make that weapon available.”
Separate to the 17 suspects the PSNI are investigating, 53-year-old Paul McIntyre of Kinnego Park in Derry has been charged with the murder of the journalist, possessing a firearm with intent, and belonging to a proscribed organisation. Currently he is the only person charged with Lyra’s murder.
Det Supt Murphy says a “web of fear” hangs over the Creggan, with residents scared to provide information that could help apprehend the man believed to be Lyra’s killer. Around 150 people watched the riots that night, but not one of them has come forward because the New IRA is “holding the community to ransom”.
“Not all of those individuals participated in the rioting. But equally not one of those individuals has come to me to say, ‘I’ll tell you who the gunman was and here’s my statement.’ That’s my battle.”
He says it could take “several years” before the force can create “the confidence or the opportunity for an individual to come forward and say, ‘let me tell you what I know about the murder of Lyra McKee’.”
Behind the scenes, a huge amount of work is going on across a whole range of different spectrums, such as the development of video evidence.
“The killer is not safe in any shape or form and nor are any of the other individuals who were involved in the attack that night. I hope they think that they’ve got away with the murder of Lyra McKee. But the truth is very far from that.
“If I get an opportunity to bring a gunman or members of the New IRA to justice for Lyra McKee’s murder, I absolutely intend to do so,” he says.
Lyra once wrote: “Here’s to better times ahead and saying goodbye to bombs and bullets once and for all.”
As well as justice for Lyra, that’s all the family want — 23 years after supposed peace. Standing in front of her mural, Nichola wears a T-shirt with a photograph of her sister on the front and the words she used to share with others: ‘Failure is not an option.’
Around 150 people were there that night — not one has come forward. The New IRA is holding the people to ransom