Reavey and O'Dowd Killings

The Reavey and O'Dowd killings were two co-ordinated gun attacks on 4 January 1976 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Volunteers from the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, shot dead five unarmed Irish Catholic civilians. Two members of the Reavey family were shot dead at their home in Whitecross and three members of the O'Dowd family were shot dead at their home in Ballydougan. Another two were wounded and one of them died of brain hemorrhage almost a month later. The shootings were part of a string of attacks on Catholics and Irish nationalists by the "Glenanne gang"; an alliance of loyalist militants, British soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers. Billy McCaughey, a police officer from the RUC Special Patrol Group, admitted taking part and accused another officer of being involved. His colleague, John Weir, said that two police officers and a British soldier were involved.

The next day, gunmen shot dead ten Protestant civilians in the Kingsmill massacre. This was claimed as retaliation for the Reavey and O'Dowd shootings. Kingsmill was the deadliest and last in a string of tit-for-tat killings in the area during the mid-1970s.

Read more about Reavey And O'Dowd Killings:  Background, Shootings, Perpetrators, Aftermath, See Also

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