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Soldiers who killed five civilians in west Belfast in 1972 ‘overreacted and lost control,’ coroner says at inquest
Relatives of those was killed during the Springhill Westrock killings, arrive at Belfast Coroner's Court, for the inquest into the 1972 west Belfast shooting of three teenagers and a priest, in a disputed incident involving the Army is being held,April 30
TWO British soldiers who shot five people in two areas of west Belfast on July 9 1972 “overreacted and lost control,” a coroner told an inquest into the killings today.
Mr Justice Scoffield rejected the explanation that the soldiers were reacting to a mass “co-ordinated” attack on a timber yard, where the soldiers were based, saying that their brigade’s radio logs “hugely undermine” that narrative.
He said he also rejected the civilian case that “not one shot had been fired” by civilians before British soldiers opened fire and said that was “much too simplistic an analysis.”
The coroner said that while soldiers may have been influenced by civilian shooting, they were not responding to “a co-ordinated attack by a mass of gunmen.”
He said he was also struck by the “youth and inexperience” of soldiers sent to serve in Belfast, as well as their “ignorance” of the political context.
Mr Justice Scoffield said the soldiers based in the woodyard had been apprehensive about the breakdown of an IRA ceasefire and had been “expecting an armed attack and were nervous and fearful of such a possibility.”
