THE use of lethal force by a member of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment was not justified in the killing of a 14-year-old schoolboy in West Belfast in August 1971, a coroner has found.
Dessie Healey was shot through the heart by a British soldier during disturbances in Lenadoon following the introduction of internment. The British Army claimed that the teenager had thrown a petrol bomb at the time he was shot dead, however, Coroner Maria Dougan found that he had thrown a glass bottle.
Witnesses to the killing claimed that after he was shot, "Paras lifted Dessie’s body and showed him to the crowd before throwing him into a Pig armoured car”.
Speaking after the coroner’s findings, the family’s solicitor Pádraig Ó Muirigh said the Healey family were thankful to Coroner Dougan for her "thorough and detailed findings".
Solicitor Pádraig Ó Muirigh with Dessie's brother Ted and wife Nuala, and RFJ casework manager Irati Oliega
"The coroner has found that the force used by the soldier who shot Desmond was ‘unjustified’ and that he had breached the ‘yellow card’ which set out the rules governing the use of force by soldiers.
"This is another shameful day in the history of the British army in this jurisdiction, in particular, the Parachute Regiment who brutalised disadvantaged communities during our recent conflict.
"In any democratic society the death of a child at the hands of the state should be subject to scrupulous investigation as a matter of urgency. The Healey family should not have had to wait 54 years for these evidence-based findings.
“Dealing with the legacy is a formidable task but the inquest process has proven to be a good model for how we might deal with our difficult past. It has delivered some resolution for the Healey family and many other families in recent years. It is precisely for this reason, in my view that the British Government has sought to guillotine the inquest process."
Mr Ó Muirigh said that Friday would have been Dessie's 69th birthday; a birthday that he shared with his twin brother Ted.
"These findings are a testament to Ted’s irrepressible spirit that never gave up the demand for the truth.”
Relatives For Justice casework manager Irati Oliega said the coroner’s findings were a vindication for Ted.
"The Coroner was satisfied that Dessie Healey did not throw a petrol bomb and rejected that British army account entirely. She found that Dessie was throwing a glass bottle and that the British soldier who fired the fatal shot – Soldier D, who shot the schoolboy to the chest following orders of Soldier A – would have known this at the time. On that basis, the Coroner concluded that Dessie did not pose a threat to life and that the use of lethal force against him was unjustified.
"Dessie was killed on the day internment was introduced, at the same time that the Parachute Regiment was responsible for the unjustified killing of civilians in the Ballymurphy Massacre. Today’s findings sit alongside those conclusions and further expose patterns of violent impunity for state actors."
