Bleary Darts Club shooting

The Bleary Darts Club shooting was a mass shooting that took place on 27 April 1975 in the village of Bleary, Northern Ireland. Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) burst into a darts club frequented by Catholics and opened fire on the crowd, killing three civilians and wounding a fourth. The attack is one of many that has been linked to the Glenanne gang.

Bleary Darts Club shooting
Part of The Troubles
LocationBleary, County Down, Northern Ireland
Date27 April 1975
22:20 PM
TargetIrish Catholics, Irish nationalists
Attack type
Mass shooting
Deaths3 civilians
Injured1
PerpetratorUlster Volunteer Force

Attack

The 'Bleary Darts Club' was frequented mainly by Catholics but was also visited by Protestants.[1] On the night of 27 April 1975, there were about thirty men inside.[2] At about 10:40pm, three masked loyalist gunmen kicked the door open and opened fire on the crowd with a Sterling submachine gun, a Webley Revolver and a shotgun.[2] When the burst of gunfire stopped, a customer switched the lights off so the gunmen could not see. There was then another burst of gunfire, followed by several single shots. Another customer kicked the door shut, and the gunmen left.[2] Three men were killed, all Catholic civilians: father-of eight John Feeney (45), father-of-six Joseph Toman (48), and father-of-four Brendan O'Hara (38). A fourth man, a Protestant, was seriously wounded.[1][2][3][4]

Perpetrators

The attack was claimed by the "Protestant Action Force", a cover name used by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group. It is believed the attackers were part of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade.[5] Six days before the attack at Bleary, the group had claimed responsibility for killing three Catholic civilians—two brothers and their pregnant sister—in a booby-trap bomb attack at a house near Granville, County Tyrone.[6][7]

Loyalists Stuart Ashtown and Derek McFarland admitted to the attack in 1980[8] along with a string of other offenses, including the shooting of Catholic civilians Marian Rafferty and Thomas Mitchell.[9]

The shooting is one of many in the area that has been linked to the Glenanne gang; a group of loyalists that included police officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and soldiers from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR).[8] The sub-machine gun was used in the Miami Showband massacre, which was carried out by members of the group three months later.[2] Circumstantial evidence links Robin Jackson to the attack. Among other evidence, a witness saw him in a car near the club the Sunday before the attack, and saw the same car near the club again, about half an hour before the attack.[8]

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See also

References
  1. McKittrick, David. Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Random House, 2001. p.537
  2. Cadwallader 2013, p. 95.
  3. "CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1975". cain.ulster.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-06-29.
  4. "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulster.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-06-29.
  5. Cadwallader 2013, p. 13, 95.
  6. "CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths". cain.ulster.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  7. Cadwallader 2013, p. 13, 87-90.
  8. Report of the Independent International Panel on Alleged Collusion on Sectarian Killings in Northern Ireland. Center for Civil and Human Rights, Notre Dame Law School, 2006. p. 47
  9. Cadwallader 2013, p. 12, 55.

Sources
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