Relatives scream abuse as women who killed boy cleared of murder

ANGRY relatives screamed abuse at a woman who knocked a teenager off his bicycle at a sectarian flashpoint in north Belfast when she was cleared of murder yesterday.

Alison McKeown, 32, was found guilty instead of the manslaughter of 16-year-old Thomas McDonald when she chased him in her car after he threw a brick at the windscreen.

She will be sentenced later.

But outside the city's Crown Court, the boy's furious mother Pauline McDonald declared the verdict a joke. She said: "I hope she rots in hell."

McKeown, a Catholic mother of six, denied murder but admitted dangerous driving after the boy, a Protestant, threw the brick.

It was alleged her car mounted the footpath at Whitewell Road close to where they both lived in September 2001 when sectarian tensions were high at the time of bitter protests outside the Holy Cross primary school in another part of north Belfast.

Her lawyers argued that although it had been a rash and dangerous act, it had been carried out in the heat of the moment.

Relatives and friends of the boy shouted abuse at McKeown after Lord Justice McCollum delivered his verdict. He said he was convinced

McKeown had deliberately driven the car with the intention of causing the teenager serious injury after he had thrown a brick at the vehicle.

The defendant lost control when her car was hit by the brick in what the judge described as a calculated and

unprovoked assault.

Later outside the court Mrs McDonald said: "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.

"For a woman to kill a child and turn around and say she didn't mean to, and then go home and speak with her boy and have another baby she had only five children when she killed my son, now she has six ...

"That says something for her and her family as well."

She added: "The lie she told is unbelievable. I hope she rots in hell."

Pointing to a pendant with her son's photograph on it, Mrs McDonald said: "I hope my son's face flashes in front of her and I hope she will never sleep another night in her life. I feel nothing for her. She doesn't have a feeling in her body."