Two men are to stand trial for the murder of the writer Lyra McKee, who was shot dead while observing a riot in Northern Ireland in 2019.
Peter Cavanagh, 35, and Jordan Devine, 22, both from Derry, have been charged with murdering McKee in the Creggan area of the city on 18 April 2019. They deny the charge and are on bail pending a trial date in Belfast.
The two suspects have also been charged, with six other men, with rioting on the night of the shooting. The district judge Ted Magill ruled on Monday there was sufficient evidence to return the eight men for trial.
It followed a two-day preliminary inquiry hearing at the Bishop Street courthouse in Derry last week.
“The task of this court is to establish if sufficient evidence exists to put the defendants on trial. I am satisfied that there is such evidence,” the judge said.
The six men charged solely with public order offences at the scene of the shooting are Joseph Barr, 33, Joe Campbell, 21, William Elliott, 56, Patrick Gallagher, 29, Kieran McCool, 53, and Jude McCrory, 25. All are from Derry. When the court clerk formally put the charges to each defendant, none replied.
McKee, a 29-year-old freelance journalist, had been observing the disturbances when a bullet hit her in the head.
Her death, shortly after the 21st anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, made headlines around the world. She was called the voice of the generation of “ceasefire babies”.
Although she was from a republican part of Belfast, McKee disdained sectarian labels and chronicled growing up gay in an essay, “A letter to my 14-year-old self”, that went viral. Her writings had investigated the disappearance of children during the Troubles and shocking contemporary suicide rates. She had also given a Ted talk and signed a two-book deal.
The funeral in Belfast had the trappings of a state occasion, attended by the then British prime minister, Theresa May, Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, and the president, Michael D Higgins, plus Northern Ireland’s party leaders. The emotion surrounding her death was credited with helping to briefly break a political deadlock at the Stormont executive.
McKee’s family has regularly appealed for those behind the killing to come forward and accept responsibility. There is a £20,000 reward for information about the killing.
A documentary released last November drew on a trove of video and audio recordings on McKee’s mobile phone, computer and voice recorder to make an intimate portrait of the writer.
