THE MURDERERS of Ronan Kerr are faceless cowards, who have carried out a dastardly act and have made “a mockery of the Irish people”.
Kate Carroll, the widow of the first PSNI officer to be murdered, spoke yesterday of her anger at the killing of Constable Kerr. “I hope that this brings the community closer and closer,” she told Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio.
She said she understood the despair and devastation the Kerr family were suffering, claiming that her sorrow at the loss of her husband, Stephen, who was shot dead in March 2009 is as raw now as it was at the time of his death.
“I know exactly what they are going to go through. I am still not over the fact that my husband was shot – it is still like yesterday,” she said. She said the Kerrs would need to be strong but would keep their dignity and would come through the tragedy. “My heart goes out to them,” she said.
Turning to the bombers, she said: “Show your faces, don’t be so cowardly. Who is the better person – that young lad that went out [on duty] in full view. My husband went out in full view, without any armour on him or anything else. It doesn’t take a hero or a man to stand behind a wall or plant a bomb underneath a car. It is despicable.”
She called for the dissidents to be “rooted out” and urged them to “get a conscience”. She said a Garda friend had telephoned her to say: “When one police officer bleeds, the rest of us hurt.”
“I’m really and truly angry that another family has to go through the hurt and the despair. I know the long road ahead of them. I am livid, absolutely livid.”
Mrs Carroll admitted the loss of her husband was “a living hell”.
“At Christmas I wanted to take a spade to dig down into the ground just to touch my husband – that’s what it feels like.
“In the snow last Christmas I was standing outside at 4am with a spade in my hand. The graveyard is not far from where I live and I wanted to go and dig down to get into my husband just to feel his chest or just to put my hand in where he was. That’s the devastation it causes,” she said.
“Has Omagh not suffered enough?” she asked. “How long can this go on?”