RUC saturation before McCusker killing
By Laura Friel
The RUC `were in no particular hurry' was how local
people have described the RUC's response to reports
that there had been a shooting incident in Maghera in
the early hours of Sunday morning.
Shortly after 1.15am two gunshots disturbed the quiet
South Derry town. According to local people, the RUC
recieved a report of gunfire in the upper part of the
town at around 1.30am. The RUC did nothing. Newspaper
reports claim at 3am, the loyalist killers telephoned
the RUC saying a man had been shot dead. The RUC still
did nothing. The body of 28-year-old Catholic victim
Fergal McCusker was discovered at the back of Fairhill
Youth Club by a caretaker from the nearby St. Mary's
Chapel. At 9am, almost eight hours after initial
reports of a shooting, the RUC moved in and cordoned
off the area.
Within a stone's throw from the murder scene stands a
RUC barracks, but seemingly the RUC heard nothing. A
surveillance camera, mounted high on a scaffolding
tower above the barracks overlooks the murder scene,
but apparently the RUC saw nothing.
At 1pm, twelve hours after Fergal's death, the RUC
informed the McCusker family that their son had been
killed. The lack of urgency displayed by the RUC after
the murder of Fergal McCusker stood in stark contrast
to heightened crown force activity in the run-up to the
killing. Local people have reported intense RUC and
British army activity for two weeks prior to the
shooting. ``DMSU were driving up and down the road for
days,'' says one resident, ``on Friday the town was
crawling with British soldiers''. On Saturday night the
streets were empty. In the early hours of Sunday
morning, when the loyalist killers struck, the RUC were
nowhere to be seen.
Christine McCusker sits besides the open coffin of her
dead son in a small back bedroom of the family's
Sunnyside home. There are no words to describe her
loss. One of seven boys, Fergal was the third eldest
child in a family of nine. Lack of employment, and
sectarian discrimination in the Six Counties led Fergal
to seek work in the USA. For six months he worked as a
labourer with a construction company in Boston. Less
than two weeks ago Fergal returned to Maghera. When he
secured a job locally, his family were happy he would
be staying home. On Saturdays, Fergal often played
soccer with a few friends. Jim McCusker describes his
son as ``a sporty kind of fella''.
Fergal was a member of the local GAA club. On 17
January he was wearing a GAA jersey but he did not play
at the club that day. In the evening Fergal and his
friends were socialising at a local bar. Shortly after
1am. he left `Maggies' with a number of other people.
Suddenly Fergal left the group, saying he was ``going
for a Chinese'' at the nearby takeaway before making his
way home. In the darkness of a narrow alleyway it is
believed Fergal was confronted by three men. Local
people saw three loyalist killers were seen leaving the
area. After hearing a gunshot, one witness describes
passing two men ``with their faces painted orange'' as he
made his way along Tircane Road to Kelly's newsagents.
After a second shot, a third man appeared from behind
the youth club, crossing the Chapel grounds towards the
Glen Road. The killers seemed in no hurry to make their
getaway.
``The wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong country''
read the front page banner headline of the British
daily tabloid `The Mirror'. When 28-year-old Fergal
McClusker was shot dead by loyalist killers, he was
only a few hundred yards away from his home. When his
loyalist assailants dragged him away, Fergal was
returning from his `local' pub. When loyalist gunmen
shot Fergal twice in the head, his shattered body lay
behind a youth club in the grounds of the local chapel
where members of his family attended Mass.
Fergal died in the town in which he had been born and
in which generations of his family had lived and died.
Fergal McCusker was a Catholic born into a sectarain
state, a nationalist reared under the shadow of a
unionist regime but he was not in the wrong place, at
the wrong time, in the wrong country. The fact that the
media can dismiss Fergal's death in this way, exposes
the very operation of the sectarian Six County
statelet. Northern nationalists, Catholics under an
Orange regime have ``no place''. Denied all the normal
criteria of citizenship, nationalists appear
``stateless'', refugees in their own country. This is the
nettle which the British media, the British government
and unionist politicans must grasp.
On Tuesday 20 January representatives from community
groups in nationalist areas gathered outside Stormont
to protest against the ongoing loyalist campaign of
sectarian killings. ``Catholic Lives, Who Cares?'' read
their banner.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)