Alleged hit man killed at school

Kevin McAlorum, aged 31, was believed responsible for the 1996 murder of Gino Gallagher, shot dead as he claimed unemployment benefits on the Falls Road. McAlorum’s young sister, Barbara, aged just 9, was killed in retaliation shortly after the murder. She was playing with a jigsaw puzzle in her home in North Belfast when the killers, who had orders to massacre everyone in the house, opened fire on her. Another man in the house was also injured.
This week, McAlorum was killed as he left his child off at an integrated school between Belfast and Lisburn. A van was used to ram his car before two men got out and shot him at close range as children at Oakwood Primary School at Derriaghy looked on.
The INLA denied McAlorum was ever a member and linked him to UDA drug dealing. They said he had been close to two former members behind a bloody internal feud in 1996 that left eight dead, including leading members Hugh Torney and Dessie McCleery.
“This wasn’t a case of getting revenge for Gino; the feud ended when Hugh Torney was killed,” said a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which is linked to the INLA.
Meanwhile, it’s been revealed in court that mobile phones belonging to an alleged dissident republican, who’s been missing from home for a year and believed dead, had been used to contact police.
Prosecuting lawyers at Belfast crown court accepted that mobile phones belonging to the man, Gareth O’Connor of Armagh, had been used to contact the police.
O’Connor’s family and the police blame the IRA for his disappearance, although it has denied involvement. He went missing after leaving home to sign on at Dundalk Garda station as a condition of bail on charges of belonging to the Real IRA.
At the trial of four County Tyrone men accused of conspiracy to murder, the defense is arguing the defendants were set up by O’Connor, who, they said, was a police informer.
Records of calls made to a police station in Armagh from O’Connor’s phones will be central to defense claims he lured the four men into a trap.
The British government has made a so-called “gagging order,” known as a Public Interest Immunity Certificate, to prevent the contents of the phone calls to the police becoming known.
The Sinn F