By Ryan Sands
The PSNI and Ministry of Defence (MOD) have paid out millions in compensation to eight survivors of the 1992 UVF gun attack on Kilcoo’s Thierafurth Inn, in which one man was murdered.
Peter McCormack, a former schoolteacher from Drumena Road in the village, was shot in the back when two gunmen walked into the pub during a charity darts match on 19 November 1992 and indiscriminately opened fire.
The 42-year-old later died from his injuries.
The UVF, which had used intelligence montages taken from a local UDR barracks, claimed the attack had been an attempt to kill a named republican who frequented the bar. He had not been present on the night.
The survivors’ civil case against the PSNI and MOD followed a 2016 Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland report into the activities of the responsible local loyalist gang. The report found that military intelligence material had been accessed by the gang and that there had been no sustained police response to disrupt its activities, despite its members already being linked to several previous murders and attempted murders.
The Ombudsman also found that intelligence about the killers’ activities was not shared appropriately, and that security forces in the region, both police and military, had been compromised through associations or sympathies with the gang.
A separate report established that the RUC had been aware of a plan by the UVF unit to remove military intelligence documents from a UDR base and chose not to intervene.
Members of the same unit were later implicated in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, in which six men were murdered.
The exact settlement figure, approved last Wednesday at Belfast High Court, is confidential under its terms. However, it is understood to total several million pounds and to be one of the largest group settlements of its kind.
The PSNI and MOD also agreed to pay all legal costs.
Speaking outside court, solicitor Gavin Booth, of Phoenix Law, said that no one who had been in the Thierafurth Inn on the night of the attack 34 years ago had recovered from the experience.
“It’s taken 11 years since the civil proceedings started for us to bring this to court, but today is finally an acknowledgement of the hurt, the pain and the trauma caused to these families,” he said.
“This was a normal Thursday night in a pub in south Down in 1992, but those persons who walked into that pub that night had a lethal intent.
“They planned to murder and they got away with it.”
