A WOMAN may have been part of the IRA gang which shot dead two RUC officers in Lurgan, Co Armagh, last Monday. She was spotted wearing clothes of a style older than her age and pulling a brown tart an shopping trolley on wheels through the town centre before the attack.
The RUC, which yesterday reconstructed events leading to the murders, describes the suspect person as an "unusually dressed female".
Police have not ruled out the possibility that the woman, dressed in a hat and tweed skirt, was an accomplice. Det Supt Allen Thompson, the officer heading the inquiry, said while he was reluctant to go into detail for procedural reasons, "there was something odd in that the age or style of the garment, which was of a tweedy nature, didn't seem to fit the younger age of the female."
"I need to either eliminate her or then suspect her," he said.
Constable John Graham, (34), and Constable David Johnston (30), were shot dead by two men thought to be wearing wigs and wind cheaters.
Yesterday police questioned pedestrians and motorists in the area of the station, and in a number of other streets where the officers had been on beat duty. Det Supt Thompson said the community response was tremendous.
It is believed the victims were followed for more than an hour after they left Lurgan RUC station at around 10.30 a.m. They walked along the main street and into Robert Street towards the swimming pool. As they returned towards the police station via Church Walk, they were gunned down by two men at about 11.45 am.
There is a slight difference of opinion on the combinations of wigs and wind cheaters the two men were believed to be wearing. Det Supt Thompson believes the combinations were that the person wearing the black wig was wearing a red wind-cheater with the logo ANVIL on the left breast and upper back. The other gunman was wearing an auburn wig and a navy coloured wind-cheater.
He said the RUC had established that the gunmen got out of their car, which had been parked in the nearby car park, ran towards the two policemen, shot' them in the head and ran back to the car and sped towards Wellington Street.
The gunmen's getaway car, a Rover 216 with a roof rack, was bought by the killers five days previously in a private sale from an innocent party in another part of Lurgan.
He said he believed the car had been driven around the town centre, including another shopping centre car park, before the shooting. It was later set on fire in the nationalist Kilwilkee estate a mile away.
He also revealed that a second car, a blue Ford Fiesta, followed the Rover at speed from the car park immediately after the attack.
In that car park a second woman was unloading her shopping at the time of the murders. She had a child and a buggy with her and detectives are trying to locate her as well, but they do not suspect she was involved.
Del Supt Thompson called on relatives and friends of the killers to turn them over. They must have heard something, seen something or suspected something and to save further death and destruction, I would really urge them to examine their conscience and come forward, whether confidentially or in person."