Only policeman to die violently between 1916 and War of Independence killed by future garda

The young revolutionary who killed the only policeman to die violently between 1916 and the War of Independence later became an early member of An Garda Síochána, a police researcher has found.

Ahead of the centenary of the death of Dublin Metropolitan Police inspector John Mills in June 1917, plans are in place to bring together his family and relatives of the man who killed him with a hurley.

Inspector Mills was in charge of a police operation to break up a Sinn Féin meeting outside the old Irish Citizen Army headquarters at Liberty Hall, destroyed in the 1916 Rising. As officers led away the speakers, Count George Plunkett and Cathal Brugha, the crowd tried to liberate the pair and the Co Westmeath-born policeman was hit in the back of the head.