Death threat for woman jailed over teen’s death

ARMED police were yesterday called to a Belfast court as relatives and friends of a dead teenager shouted abuse at a woman jailed for his manslaughter.

Alison McKeown, 33, wept in the dock at Belfast Crown Court as she was given a two-year sentence for the manslaughter of 16-year-old Thomas McDonald.

As she was led away, abuse and a death threat were shouted at her.

The Protestant teenager died after the Catholic mother of six drove at him, knocking him off his bike at a sectarian flash point in north Belfast in September 2001.

McKeown, whose address cannot be reported for legal reasons, was found not guilty of murder but convicted of manslaughter at a hearing last month.

Her lawyer Jim Gallagher, appealing for leniency yesterday, said McKeown had been provoked when Thomas McDonald threw a brick at her windscreen as she drove through the Whitewell Road area.

He added that although it had been a dangerous act, it had been carried out in the heat of the moment.

Passing sentence, the judge, Lord Justice McCollum, accepted that it was the reaction of an impulsive woman and her actions had not been premeditated.

The judge added he had taken into account the fact that Mrs McKeown was unlikely to commit any other offences in the future.

Around 30 relatives and supporters joined Thomas McDonald’s parents as the sentence was passed.

A short distance away around six members of McKeown’s family sat in the main body of the court. They were later taken out by a back route to avoid confrontation. Outside the court, relatives of Thomas McDonald described what had happened as a “circus” and a “joke”.

The teenager’s death occurred when nationalist and loyalist mobs were attacking each other at a number of interface areas throughout the north of the city.

Sectarian tensions had boiled over after loyalists blockaded the Catholic Holy Cross Primary School in the Ardoyne area.

When McKeown, 32, was found guilty of the manslaughter, the boy’s furious mother Pauline McDonald declared the verdict a joke. She said: “I hope she rots in hell.”

“I have to go home and tell a two-year-old that she has to talk to a photograph of her brother and she will never, ever see him.”