The Troubles in Moneymore

A total of seven people were killed in Troubles-related violence in or near the County Londonderry village of Moneymore, of whom six were Protestant and one Catholic. All were killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) except 71-year-old Protestant Samuel Miller, who was beaten to death by the Ulster Defence Association after witnessing a robbery. Of the IRA's six victims, three were members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and one was a soldier in the Royal Irish Regiment. The IRA's two civilian victims were a Catholic farmer killed by a booby trap bomb on his farm, and a contractor for the British Army and RUC who was shot at his home in The Loup. The contractor was Harry Henry, a Protestant businessman who had set up a building company with his brother which prospered by supplying bomb-proof windows and repairing damaged security bases around Northern Ireland. All were killed in separate incidents except for two of the RUC officers, who were shot by IRA gunmen after a car chase. One of the officers, Kenneth Sheehan, had just returned to duty after being seriously injured in an ambush in Derry in 1976. In April 1978, a plaque was dedicated at his former school, Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, to commemorate his death and that of two other former pupils and RUC men killed in the Troubles. Francis Hughes' involvement in the killings was confirmed in an IRA account of the incident.