Two young boys murdered by IRA bomb which devastated town of Warrington
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The stall selling flowers for ­Mother’s Day was full of blooms. But just yards away lay the ­bodies of two young children.
Hundreds of pieces of cast iron shrapnel from two litter bins, which had been blasted apart by Semtex, littered the shopping precinct.
Crowds were still fleeing the scene, streaming over the bridge past the statue of local rugby league hero Brian Bevan.
On March 20, 1993, the IRA killed two people and injured 54 others, some seriously.
When Assistant Chief Constable Brian Baister surveyed the scene on Bridge Street, Warrington, he had one thought: get the bombers.
Yet 25 years on, they have still not been caught.
(Image: PA)
Speaking for the first time about the tragedy, Brian says: “There were literally thousands of people running to get away. I was there about 30 minutes after the bombs exploded.
“I was told almost immediately two young boys had been killed.
“The bomb disposal team arrived to clear Bridge Street.” He describes the effect of the blast as “catastrophic”, adding: “One boy was in the road, the other in a shop doorway. The street is extremely narrow.
“The inquiry, in terms of lack of evidence, never really got off the ground. There was no forensic evidence.”
(Image: PA)
The bombing, in the Cheshire town’s centre on a busy Saturday afternoon, horrified the world.
Three-year-old Johnathan Ball died at the scene. He had been shopping for a Mother’s Day card. Dad Wilf never got over the death of his only child. He died of a suspected heart attack in 2004, aged 69.
The second victim, 12-year-old Tim Parry, had also been in town shopping for a card, and a pair of Everton shorts.
Despite the early information given to Brian during the initial chaos of the aftermath, Tim would in fact die in hospital five days later.
His parents Colin and Wendy founded the Foundation for Peace to promote understanding among all communities affected by conflict and violence.
(Image: PA)
Meanwhile, the identity of the boys’ killers remains a mystery. One bomb had been planted in a bin outside the Argos store, the other outside Boots and McDonald’s. Brian, now retired, reveals that only the CCTV camera outside Argos captured an image.
But all it showed were the bombers’ hands as they placed the devices.
“We just never saw enough of them,” Brian says. “Warrington had just put these bins in.
“The whole thinking on it was a retaliation by the IRA on the people of the town, who they blamed after two other IRA men had been arrested after an attack on a local gas holder.
(Image: Alamy)
“You don’t put a bomb in a shopping centre the day before Mother’s Day unless you’re attacking a community.” He goes on: “The universal feeling was that it was unauthorised. There was also a suggestion that the people responsible were ‘dealt with’.
“But nobody has any evidence that that happened and I think it’s a bit fanciful. I don’t know that the IRA had that sort of authority. But, to this day, the murders remain unsolved.”
Weeks earlier, intelligence officers had tracked two arms caches being smuggled into North Wales by the Provisional IRA and followed them to forests in Cheshire.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
The men who transported them were arrested in Manchester, but police knew they had an active cell in the area.
“I knew we had a problem, we should be expecting something,” says Brian.
“But in Cheshire we weren’t high profile. The IRA were going for ‘spectaculars’ – bombing a landmark or those they considered their enemies; military personnel, police.”
They struck at the gas holders in Warrington on February 25. Flames shot 1,000ft into the air. Miraculously, no one was injured.
What wasn’t revealed is that one of the devices was on an outlet pipe and failed to explode.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
Brian adds: “It was pointing straight at a block of flats 100 yards away. If it had gone off, I have no doubt there would have been loss of life.”
Those bombers fled but made a stupid mistake. They jumped a red traffic light and were pulled over by a patrol car. The senior IRA man in the back shot an officer three times then got out and pointed his weapon at him as he lay injured.
Another officer in an approaching police car switched on his lights and siren and the two bombers fled.
“I have no doubt if he hadn’t done that I would be attending another funeral,” says Brian.
“He was going to finish him off, the man he perceived as the enemy.”
An hour later the culprits flagged down a car and shoved the driver into the boot. A passer-by dialled 999.
They were intercepted in a high-speed chase by an armed unit from Greater Manchester Police.
(Image: Liverpool Echo)
“There was a shoot-out,” Brian continues.
“It was like the Gunfight at the OK Corral. They were firing at each other as they drove along.”
Police managed to stop the vehicle. The kidnapped driver was unharmed. Senior IRA figure Pairic MacFhloinn, 40, was sentenced to 35 years.
His driver Denis Kinsella, 25 – from a Midlands family who supported the IRA and had hidden weapons on their allotment – was jailed for 25 years.
MacFhloinn would be freed six years later, as part of the peace process. Brian has no idea if there were admissions as to who carried out the March 20 bombing in those talks.
“We were out of that loop, the ­anti-terror squad at the Met were out of the loop,” he says. “It was a purely political process.
“The deaths of Johnathan Ball and Tim Parry would tragically, but und­­oubtedly, spur on the peace process. It was an awful tragedy, buts also an impetus.”
At Cheshire Police Headquarters in Winsford, the file on the fateful day 25 years ago remains open.
Brian and his former coll­eag­ues don’t know if it will ever be closed.