February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Constable Stephen Paul Carroll, a married man with children from the Banbridge area of County Down, was shot as he stepped out of a patrol car in Craigavon, County Armagh shortly before 10 p.m.
The 48-year-old died later in hospital.
The shooting happened at Lismore Manor as police were responding to a call from a woman for help and was the second fatal gun attack by dissident republicans in just 48 hours.
On Saturday night, two young soldiers were shot dead by the Real IRA at an army base in Antrim (see story opposite page).
The Continuity IRA is one of a number of dissident republican paramilitary groups opposed to the peace process that have carried out bomb and gun attacks on civilians and the security forces.
Constable Carroll was the first police officer to be murdered in the North since Constable Frank O’Reilly was killed by a loyalist blast bomb during disturbances linked to the Drumcree dispute in 1998.
The last police officers murdered by republicans, RUC constables Roland John Graham and David Andrew Johnston, were shot dead by the IRA in Lurgan, County Armagh in June 1997.
Constable Carroll was the first PSNI officer to have been murdered by paramilitaries since the force was formed in 2001.
Against the backdrop of both shootings, justice minister Dermot Ahern and foreign affairs minister Micheal Martin are to meet the Northern Ireland security minister Paul Goggins and Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward.
A meeting between Garda commissioner Fachtna Murphy and the North’s chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde, is also to take place this week.
Orde held a press conference Tuesday along with first minister Peter Robinson and deputy first minister Martin McGuinness who described the killers in both shootings as “traitors” to the island of Ireland.