The verdicts landed like a second shot. Seven years after a bullet tore through Lyra McKee as she stood beside police vehicles watching rioting in Derry, three men accused of assisting her killer walked free from Belfast crown court. Peter Cavanagh, 38, Jordan Devine, 25, and Paul McIntyre, 58, were found not guilty on Friday of the journalist’s murder, a case the judge had called “an act of senseless violence.”
McKee, a 29-year-old author from Belfast, was watching disturbances in the Creggan area of Londonderry on 18 April 2019 when a single shot struck her. The New IRA, a dissident republican paramilitary group, claimed responsibility. None of the three defendants was accused of firing the fatal round. Instead, prosecutors argued they accompanied the lone gunman to a firing point and encouraged or assisted him – a charge of joint enterprise murder they all denied.
“Three men cleared of murdering journalist Lyra McKee in Derry; family says justice system failed.”
The non-jury trial, one of the longest in recent Northern Irish legal history, opened in May 2024 and ended this April. Judge Mrs Justice Smyth reserved her judgment to give “proper consideration” to the arguments. The defence had said much of the prosecution case was based on “pure speculation.” Part of that case relied on footage from MTV, whose camera crew had left the scene before the shooting. In February, Smyth rejected a defence attempt to throw out the case for insufficient evidence. But when she finally ruled, she said the evidence against the men “has fallen short of that required for conviction.”
Inside the courtroom, little was seen from the defendants. Lyra’s partner, Sara Canning, sat on the front row but left before the verdicts were finished. In the public gallery, friends and relatives of the accused sat on one side; Lyra’s family on the other. Outside, her sister Nichola Corner called the not-guilty verdict a “complete and utter shock.”
“Previously, the judge has said that each of these defendants had a case to answer,” Corner said. “However, the evidence did not stand up to the level of scrutiny that she expected to take the case over the line, which means that that system has completely failed Lyra and has failed our family and has failed Northern Ireland.”
She demanded an end to what she called the “culture of silence” surrounding the killing. “Over 150 people witnessed what happened – not one came forward,” she said. “People are afraid to speak out, they are afraid to tell the truth, they are afraid to share information that they have that could convict guilty people.”
The gunman has never been captured. Corner promised to fight on, quoting her sister: “If you’re going to go down – go down fighting.”
The judge, in her closing words, said the murder was “an act of senseless violence.” For Lyra’s family, the question of who fired the shot – and who helped him – remains unanswered.