Police in Northern Ireland have renewed an appeal for help in catching the loyalist killers of a man gunned down in an attack on a Co Down pub more than 30 years ago.
Peter McCormack was shot dead when UVF gunmen burst into the pub at Kilcoo and opened fire on customers attending a charity darts match.
The 42-year-old from Drumena Road was a former teacher.
Police said he had been the “innocent victim of a sickening sectarian attack”.
The bar was full of customers when the attack happened at around 9pm on 19 November 1992.
Three other customers, including a 69-year-old man who was registered blind, were also injured in the attack.
Police believe the gunmen escaped in a grey Ford Orion car which was found abandoned in Tollymore Forest Park a few kilometres away.
It had been stolen from an address in Belfast earlier in the day.
“More than 30 years have now passed since Peter’s murder, and I am appealing for anyone who has any knowledge of what happened that evening, who have not spoken to police previously, or who have any new information to do so now,” said PSNI senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Byrne.
“It is not too late, if anyone now feels they are able to talk to us, we are ready to listen,” he said.
A critical report by Northern Ireland’s Office of the Police Ombudsman in 2016 found that the year after the attack, RUC Special Branch began receiving information about loyalists suspected of terrorism in the south Down area, including the Thierafurth attack.
The report found that most of the information received by police was not passed to investigating officers.
A television documentary subsequently named one of the alleged suspects.
In 2022, a judge said the police were in breach of a legal duty to carry out an effective inquiry into the fatal gun attack.
