Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Mum was a hero who paid the ultimate price
THE daughter of police officer Sharon Beshenivsky said she will always have a void in her life as the last of her killers was jailed.
Lydia Beshenivsky, who turned four on the day the PC was shot dead in 2005, said her mother was a hero who paid the ultimate sacrifice.
She told a court yesterday she was too young and innocent to understand how her mother had died responding to an armed raid.
Piran Ditta Khan, 75, mastermind of the robbery, will die in jail after he was sentenced to at least 40 years.
Lydia, now 22, remembered a car arriving at her house during her birthday party. She said: “It was the police coming to take my dad away. I had no idea where he was going.
“It did not concern me as I was too busy playing and eating cake.”
She was told by others that she “screamed her head off ” when informed of her mother’s death, though she has no memory of that now.
Lydia said: “I remember asking when she was coming home and being confused about why she wasn’t.
“I have little to no memory of my mum. I had to rely on my mum’s friends telling me about her. I have to look at photos to remind me of my mum.”
Lydia was proud of her mother but added: “There will always be a void in my life, a void that should have been filled with my mum’s presence.”
Directing her words to the killer, she told him: “You and your associates robbed me of a future and time with my mum.”
Paul Beshenivsky, who was married to Sharon for four years when she died, said telling the children what had happened was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He added: “We lost Sharon in the most brutal way.
If Piran