MOURNERS WERE told yesterday that the father of the man who was shot dead in his rented home at Prehen in the Waterside area of Derry last Wednesday, hated his son’s lifestyle but loved him enough to tell him he did.
Jim McConnell died after he was shot four times in the upper body by two masked gunmen who forced their way into his Woodlands Avenue house. Mr McConnell had only moved into the house some months after he was released from prison last year after serving a sentence for possessing cocaine with intent to supply.
Yesterday Fr Joseph Gormley told mourners in St Joseph’s Church, Galliagh, that the victim’s father Hugh had tried “time after time” to tell his son that the way he was living was wrong and was bringing pain to others, not least to his own family.
“Hugh McConnell hated the way Jim lived, loved him enough to tell him so and always gave him a chance to change. We need to allow Jesus to speak through us as Hugh has.
“We need to be as clear-cut in our attitude to drugs as Hugh is. That means we can never say it is alright to sell, buy or use a little bit of that soft or hard drug. If we adopt that attitude we are in fact condoning a culture which in fact fills families with more anguish and pain,” he said.
Fr Gormley said that no one, no matter what he or she may have done in the past, deserved to die in the way Jim McConnell died.
“Just as there can be certain ambivalence by some towards drugs, there can be certain ambivalence towards the murder of those involved in that scene.
“If we, in any way, think that Jim McConnell was responsible for his own death, then we are in fact beginning to condone the actions of those who brutally murdered him. Such rationalisation is incompatible with the way in which Jesus thought and acted.”
Fr Gormley said the church speaks with truth and love “when we declare murder is murder and is always wrong and can never be condoned for any reason”.