Thomas Devlin’s mother is glad killers cannot strike again
Yesterday two Belfast men have were jailed for life for the murder of teenager Thomas Devlin in August 2005.
Nigel Brown, 26, of Whitewell Road, and Gary Taylor, 23, from Mountcollyer Avenue, had denied killing Thomas, 15, who was stabbed on Somerton Road.
Standing alongside Thomas’s father Jim Devlin outside Belfast Crown Court yesterday the boy’s mother, Penny Holloway said the trial had been a “very difficult” experience.
Her son was stabbed as he walked back from a sweet shop on north Belfast’s Somerton Road.
Yesterday a jury took just 86 minutes to decide that the pair were guilty of his murder.
Mrs Holloway said: “We had been warned but in the cold light of the courtroom, as a parent you never want to hear your son had been stabbed nine times,” she said.
“One gratifying aspect is that those who did it are off the streets and won’t have the opportunity to kill anybody else.”
Mrs Holloway described him as a “kind and generous, much loved son and brother with a great sense of humour”.
Brown had already pleaded guilty to attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to Thomas’s friend Jonathan McKee.
Mrs Holloway added: “Thomas could make fun out of doing nothing. On the night that he was killed he was with his friends walking home believing that he was safe – he had no reason to believe otherwise.
She continued: “Gary Taylor killed Thomas but we still have no idea why and we probably will never know.
“However, what we do know is that Thomas was brutally murdered and he has been deprived of living his life to his full potential.
“Thomas is in our thoughts every day. We all miss him very much and whilst this trial brings his killers to their rightful place in prison, we would much prefer to have Thomas alive.”
She said the trial, which she and her husband had attended every single day, was “very difficult” to listen to, particularly when there was evidence from the pathologist about her son’s injuries.
Mr Justice McLaughlin told Belfast Crown Court the murder of the Catholic schoolboy, who had been on his way home from buying sweets, “was a murder which completely shocked this entire community, but especially the community of north Belfast”.
He added that Thomas and two friends with him “were attacked without any reason or provocation whatever”.
