Gervaise McKerr, Eugene Toman and Sean Burns - Preliminary Hearing today 2PM

A preliminary hearing into the Stalker Sampson series of inquests concerning a number of fatal shootings by the RUC in County Armagh in 1982 will reconvene in Belfast this afternoon, some five years and ten months since the last substantive preliminary hearings of the inquests were held.

Madden & Finucane represent the next of kin of Gervaise McKerr, Eugene Toman and Sean Burns who were killed on Tullygally East Road on 11 November 1982, after officers of the RUC Headquarters Mobile Support Unit fired in excess of 100 rounds, from the rear, into their vehicle.

None of the men were armed. In June 1984 three RUC officers were acquitted of murdering Eugene Toman. Fourteen years after their inquests were re-opened, they have still not been held. In November 2020, 38 years after their deaths, the families commenced judicial review proceedings in the High Court, relying on the European Convention on Human Rights and domestic law to challenge the delay in holding the inquests.