Unarmed | IMGpapers 1980

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 7-7 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 9 of the scan

Michael had permis

sion purchase shotgun, and was in the process of doing so around the time the attack took place. But even if they had had a shotgun it would not Have been an adequate defence: because of the of the HOL COCCe children, Bernadette and Michael could have SenI oate shotgun around the house.

A loaded pistol would have presented less of ditticulty. The police knew all this and, says Michael, the knowledge would not have been confined to the RUC:

'Obviously the gunmen who came knew You wcabolis don't come battering on a door if you think you'll be met by a gun. They must have been very, very sure we had nothing.

'There's only one way they could have know that and that was through the police. ings this way:

'There's just a possibility that they knew it was going to happen and they decided to kill two birds with one stone - have us done in, and catch the boys who were doing it.

'The army saved ou after the boys had left. we had been dead then we wouldn't have had lives to save.

Socialist Challenge 19 February 1981 Page 9