Ben Lowry: Remembering two killings in the centre of Belfast on the last day of June 1990

(Scroll down for a link to a longer essay Ben Lowry wrote about these killings in 2020 and for a link to his main weekly column)

Constables Harry Beckett and Gary Meyer were walking at Queen Street. Two men ran up and shot them in the back of the head.

We have all been affected by different Troubles killings, and I remember well those two. It was Saturday June 30 1990, the day after I left school, age 18. I was struck by the terrifying method of running up behind someone and putting a bullet in their skull. Imagine walking in a bustling city centre thinking about anything – maybe something you have just seen in a shop window or perhaps what you are going to eat for lunch – and suddenly you hear footsteps, then bang. Or it is all so fast you don’t even hear the bang?

It was the first killings that made me think hard about the killings of security force members. I grew up with regular news reports of killings, and I think to a boy the death of someone in uniform is like the death of someone in a war – one of those things that happened in a conflict, rather than a tragedy.

Over the years I began to ask about that double slaying. The web version of this column will link to a 2020 piece I wrote on how one of the two RUC men’s wife died months later of a broken heart, and how an anonymous republican phoned me to condemn the attacks (see link below).

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor

• Ben Lowry in 2020 on the 30th anniversary of the Becket and Meyer killings

• Ben Lowry main column this week: System of UK student fees is fair but Stormont won’t say so