Three men have been found not guilty of the murder of the journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead while reporting on rioting in Londonderry in 2019. The verdicts were delivered at Belfast Crown Court this afternoon, bringing to an end a long and closely watched case that has weighed heavily on her family and on the wider community in Northern Ireland. For a nation that has long craved answers over her killing, the outcome landed as a fresh and painful blow.
The three men who stood trial were Paul McIntyre, Peter Kavanagh and Jordan Devine. They had been accused of murder on a joint enterprise basis, meaning prosecutors alleged that they accompanied and encouraged the lone, masked gunman who fired the fatal shot, rather than that they themselves pulled the trigger. The judge returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts, and the three men walked free after the ruling was read out in court.
Lyra McKee was 29 years old when she was killed. She was shot in the head after a masked gunman opened fire towards police during a night of rioting and disorder in the city in April 2019. She had been observing the unrest as a journalist when the shooting happened, and her death sent shockwaves far beyond Northern Ireland, coming to be seen as an attack not only on an individual but on the practice of journalism itself.
The case was heard as a non-jury trial in front of a judge alone, a process that lasted close to two years. Witnesses who gave evidence were offered anonymity, an unusual arrangement that lawyers said reflected the fear that still surrounds cases of this kind in the region. Proceedings began after ten o'clock in the morning on the day of the ruling, with the verdicts delivered a little after half past two in the afternoon.
Central to the case is the fact that the person who actually pulled the trigger that night has never been identified or traced. Detectives investigating the killing were determined to establish who was behind the shooting, but the masked, hooded figure responsible for the gunshot that killed Lyra McKee has remained unknown. The prosecution's case therefore rested on the alleged roles of those said to have been present and involved around the gunman rather than on the shooter himself.
The self-styled new IRA, a dissident republican group, previously admitted responsibility for the attack. Its members reject the landmark peace agreement that brought an end to decades of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. The group later apologised and claimed that Lyra McKee had not been the intended target, but the killing took place on the 21st anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, and police described those behind it as representing a new breed of militant.
Members of Lyra McKee's family were sitting in the public benches as the verdicts were read out, and were visibly emotional, with some covering their mouths in shock and a number of relatives and friends walking out of the courtroom as proceedings continued. In a statement afterwards, her sister, Nicola Corner, said the outcome had failed the family and that their pursuit of justice was not over, insisting that every possible avenue would still be examined.
The family said the wider silence around such cases needed to end, arguing that a reluctance to come forward with information allowed those responsible to escape accountability. They stressed that they would continue to press for answers, recalling that the legal process had stretched over years since the first murder charge was brought in early 2020. With the trigger man still untraced and the accused now cleared, the question of whether anyone will ultimately be held responsible for Lyra McKee's death remains unresolved.