Killing of Andrew Kearney

Andrew Kearney (c. 1965–19 July 1998) was a Belfast man from the Twinbrook Estate who came from an Irish republican family with a history of supporting Sinn Féin; his maternal grandfather had reportedly served in the IRA alongside Joe Cahill and Gerry Adams' father. Kearney himself was a professional footballer and father of four. According to family members, including his sister, he had no paramilitary involvement, though the book Lost Lives notes he "had a reputation for getting involved in fights" and had been in several non-political confrontations with local republicans in the months before his death, resulting in threats against him. Two weeks before he was killed, Kearney allegedly beat a man unconscious in a pub brawl; the man was reportedly a north Belfast IRA commander.

On the night of 19 July 1998, at least five men broke into Kearney's eighth-floor flat in the New Lodge area of Belfast. Kearney was awake caring for his two-week-old daughter, Caitlin Rose, who was asleep on his chest at the time. The intruders placed Caitlin and her mother, Lisa, into a bedroom and disabled the telephone. Kearney was overpowered, allegedly with the assistance of chloroform, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was dragged to the building's lift and shot three times — once in each knee and once in the ankle.

Lisa found Kearney unconscious and bleeding heavily. Unable to rouse any neighbours, she had to run to another floor to find a working telephone, and the lift doors had been jammed, forcing her to go to the ground floor to free them. An ambulance took Kearney to the Mater Hospital, but he is believed to have died en route.

Kearney's mother, Maureen, who was diabetic, suffered a heart attack upon hearing of her son's death but survived. It is believed the shooting stemmed from a personal grudge and was ordered by the IRA commander involved in the earlier pub altercation; republicans claimed the commander had been "stood down" at the time but persuaded associates to carry out the attack. The killing occurred while the Provisional IRA was on ceasefire, only three months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, and amid unionist demands that Sinn Féin be excluded from the new Northern Ireland government.

Maureen Kearney publicly stated she did not want Sinn Féin punished for the attack, instead blaming "gangster" elements within the IRA, and said she did not want Sinn Féin to be excluded from government as a result. Local Sinn Féin councillors and some IRA members attended Kearney's funeral Mass, and senior Sinn Féin figure Gerry Kelly called the killing "wrong and should not have happened." Maureen Kearney campaigned for her son's killers to be brought to justice, presenting Sinn Féin's head office with the funeral bill to demand accountability. She died of diabetes less than a year after her son's death.

Journalist Suzanne Breen has written that, unlike the later murder of Robert McCartney, the Kearney killing did not generate comparable political pressure on Sinn Féin, attributing this to the prevailing political climate shortly after the Belfast Agreement and the perception that such killings represented internal IRA "house-keeping."