FORMER BRITISH SOLDIER CHARGED WITH AIDAN McANESPIE KILLING
M&M News Service
The British soldier who fired the fatal shot which killed Aidan McAnespie at a security checkpoint at Aughnacloy 34 years ago let out “a shrill… a high pitched sound” immediately afterwards, his trial in Belfast has been told. A fellow Guardsman on duty with the then 18-year-old David Jonathan Holden said he first heard a burst of automatic fire before finding the accused standing with “his hand on the butt of the machine gun looking very shocked.” Mr McAnespie, who worked at Monaghan Poultry Products, died from a shot fired from a general purpose machine gun (GPMG) mounted in the lookout tower at the permanent vehicle checkpoint on the Monaghan Road on Sunday February 21st 1988. The 23- year-old was on his way to watch a GAA match at the nearby grounds of Aghaloo GAC further up the road towards the border at Moybridge when the fatal bullet ricocheted off the road and struck him in the back before exiting via the front of his chest. He died at the scene.
The court was told that a forensic expert noted that the trajectory of the bullet was unusual and that the deceased fell to his death immediately after the shots were fired. The prosecution also said that in order to fire the gun it would at least require 9lbs of pressure to be applied to the trigger and that “force is required”. Former Grenadier Guardsman Holden, now aged 52 and from England, whose address is listed as Chancery House on Belfast’s Victoria Street, admits firing the fatal round. He has denied Mr McAnespie’s manslaughter, claiming that his finger had slipped and that he had accidentally fired the weapon. Mr Justice O’Hara was shown maps of the area on the Monaghan road where Mr McAnespie was shot and the British Army sangar where Holden was posted at the time.
A GPMG gun identical to the one Mr Holden was in charge of on the day of the shooting was also shown to the court. The soldier on duty with Holden in the lookout post told the trial at Belfast Crown Court which opened on Monday that he had watched Mr McAnespie park his car in the housing estate at nearby Coronation Park before passing through the vehicle checkpoint on foot. He told Mr Justice O’Hara and the Diplock-style non-jury trial that as Mr McAnespie was allegedly “a person of interest” to the security forces, he had shouted to Guardsman Holden about his approach. He did this because Mr McAnespie would be out of his line of sight as he passed through the checkpoint. He added that Holden may have mentioned Mr McAnespie having passed and was approaching a garage on the Monaghan Road. Meanwhile he continued with his own duties. Asked if he had heard anything, he replied: “Yes, I did. I heard a burst of automatic fire”.
The witness said he thought he had cocked his own weapon thinking the “VCP was under attack” before setting off the alarm bringing down the checkpoint security barriers which “totally isolated the VCP.” Asked if he had heard anything else, he replied: “I heard a shrill from Holden … a high pitched sound” before moving to his position at the top of their army sangar. “I saw Guardsman Holden; he had his hand on the butt of the machine gun looking very shocked”. He added that having been relieved of his own rifle and duty, he was separated from the Guardsman and had no conversation with him afterwards. Under cross-examination he accepted he had “no concerns about Mr Holden’s demeanour or his behaviour or anything like that” before the shooting. In the aftermath and seeing the shocked expression on Holden’s face he “presumed” what happened “was nothing more than a negligent discharge of the gun …an accidental firing of the gun … that was my immediate thought.”
The former soldier also agreed that Mr Holden was “a perfectly straight forward Guardsman … nothing untoward in his behaviour … who never expressed a view about anybody and didn’t even express a view about Mr McAnespie.” To this last comment, the former soldier said he “didn’t think he (Holden) would have known who Mr McAnespie was.” …..
