RUC killer was 'calm and normal'

(First Edition)

AN RUC officer drove through two security checkpoints with a pump-action shotgun hours before walking into a Sinn Fein office and killing three men, an inquest in Belfast was told yesterday, writes David McKittrick.

A policeman who spoke to Allen Moore said that he appeared 'perfectly calm and normal'. Although some police were trying to trace Moore, a general alert was not issued until after the shootings.

The inquest is into the deaths of the three men he killed in February 1992 - Sinn Fein members Patrick Loughran, 61, and Pat McBride, 40, and Michael O'Dwyer, 21 - and Moore, who used the gun to kill himself.

A policeman manning a checkpoint on the outskirts of Belfast said Moore seemed normal. 'He asked me to contact his unit who requested he report to his station.' Shortly afterwards Moore was stopped driving the wrong way in a one-way street, but was allowed to proceed. When he called at his station a constable reported seeing a suit-bag in the boot when his car was checked. It contained the shotgun.

A witness to the attack in the office in Falls Road told of being shot in the face. A doctor told him the cartridge had been packed with glass. Others told of stepping over bodies to get out of the office.

The inquest continues.