THE PARENTS of murdered Belfast schoolboy Thomas Devlin said yesterday the sentences handed down to his killers vindicated their four-year fight for justice.
Penny Holloway and Jim Devlin were responding to the decision of Belfast Crown Court to order that their son’s killers serve minimum sentences of 30 years and 22 years respectively.
“We placed our faith in the jury system once the decision to prosecute had been taken, and the guilty verdicts are a vindication of our position,” said Ms Holloway, speaking on behalf of her family.
She said they wished to particularly thank the PSNI for bringing Gary Taylor and Nigel Brown to justice, as “their commitment to the investigation from the outset led to an unwavering belief that the case should go before a jury”.
The family also welcomed the “clear message from the court” that knife killers “will be given a heavy prison sentence”, she said.
She described Thomas, who was 15 when he was murdered, as “a bright and intelligent teenager who was kind, caring, fun-loving and popular with all of those who knew him.
“We together with his brother James and sister Megan still miss him very much as do his friends and wider family circle,” she said.
“Thomas had his whole life ahead of him and he has been denied his life and all of the opportunities open to him purely because Gary Taylor and Nigel Brown very deliberately chose to take his life away from him on the night of August 10th 2005.”
Ms Holloway said despite the fact that his killers “will be in prison for many years for killing Thomas the simple fact is that we as a family will forever more have a huge void in our lives where Thomas was and should be now”.
The family also welcomed the sentences totalling 52 years as it “will ensure that our streets will now be a lot safer”, she said.
“The clear message from the court today is that if people choose to kill someone with a knife then all those involved in the murder will be given a heavy prison sentence.”
Ms Holloway also thanked the media for their support of the family “by ensuring that Thomas was not forgotten during these past five years”.
The family also paid tribute to all those who had supported them over the years and for their “kind words and prayers”.
“In particular we would like to thank Jonny and Fintan who were with Thomas on the night he was killed, for staying with him, and together with others who stopped to help, for trying to save his life,” she said. “He quite simply did not deserve to be murdered.
“Not a day goes past when we do not think of him. He is always in our thoughts and always will be. There is a very real sadness in us when we consider what has been taken from him.
“We miss him hugely and for us this will always be the case, as we face our futures without him,” she said.
Labelling the handling of the case as a “catalogue of how not to run a criminal justice system”, the North’s victims commissioner Brendan McAllister told the media the Devlin family were leaving court with a “life sentence of loss and grief from which there’s no parole and no reprieve”.
The fact that they had to wage a campaign to get the Public Prosecution Service to try the teenager’s killers was a “terrible indictment of our criminal justice system”.