The Troubles in Tynan

This is a list of incidents of violence during The Troubles in Tynan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Incidents in Tynan during the Troubles resulting in two or more fatalities:

1977

• 8 October 1977 - Margaret Ann Hearst (24), a single mother who joined the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) to help pay for her child's upbringing, was shot dead in front of her three-year-old daughter at Hearst's parents' farmhouse, Doogary, Tynan, where she lived in a nearby caravan. Her mother and grandmother were tied up. The gunmen also reportedly fired at the young daughter, with a bullet passing through a cuddly toy the child gripped as she watched her mother die.^[1] Margaret Hearst's father, Ross, was murdered three years later in 1980 after being abducted from a friend's home in Silverstream, County Monaghan, near the border with Northern Ireland.

1981

• 21 January 1981 - Sir Norman Stronge (86), Ulster Unionist Party member, and former Speaker at Stormont, and his son, James Stronge (48), an off duty member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary reserve, both aristocratic Protestants, were shot dead by the Provisional Irish Republican Army at their mansion, Tynan Abbey, Tynan.^[2] A group of men in military style uniform forced their way into the abbey, a mansion in its own large grounds near the Border, sought out the father and son, and shot them. They then placed bombs and incendiary devices and set the mansion alight. It was destroyed by the fire. Sir Norman Stronge, one of the oldest people killed during the troubles, had been Stormont MP for Mid-Armagh from 1938–69, and Speaker of the House from 1945 until his retirement. James Stronge had taken over the Mid-Armagh seat in 1969 and held it until 1972. He had been a Unionist member of the NI Assembly from 1973–74. Both father and son were members of Derryhaw Boyne Defenders Orange Lodge. The PIRA claimed the Stronges had been targeted as "symbols of hated unionism" and "as a direct reprisal for a whole series of loyalist assassinations and murder attacks". A man was extradited from County Monaghan in 1984 to stand trial for the killings, but was acquitted the following year.^[3]

References

1. Cusack, Jim. "Genocidal killer who got 'up close and personal", independent.ie; 9 November 2003; accessed 8 February 2014.
2. NI Conflict Archive on the Internet
3. McKittrick, Kelters, Feeney and Thornton. Lost Lives. Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 1999, pp. 849-50