PSNI FAMILY'S ANXIETY:THE WIFE of a PSNI officer spoke harrowingly but powerfully yesterday about how the killings of the two British soldiers in Antrim and of Constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, Co Antrim deeply affected and troubled her, her son and her husband.
She told of how her 12-year-old-son “clung to her giant of a father” begging him not to go out to work yesterday terrified that he too would be murdered by the dissidents like his colleague, Constable Carroll.
“They have created terror, they have created terror in my home, but will it stop my husband going out to work, will it stop me and my family 100 per cent supporting him? No it will not,” she said.
The woman said she was “so proud and honoured to be the wife of a serving police officer” but she also feared for her husband’s safety. “I support him and his colleagues entirely. But I don’t want to have that death notice brought to my home,” she said.
The woman named Angela phoned BBC Radio Ulster to explain what was the “reality” in her home and to sympathise with the families of the murdered men including Constable Carroll’s wife Kate. She said, “I have a 12 year old who came home from school yesterday and of course he had heard the gossip at school. He was so distressed, he came home and he’s got anxiety, he’s got stress. He’s 12!”
She added: “We spoke to him and we held him and we told him we loved him very, very much. We told him that daddy had a job to do, that daddy had to go out and protect – this is not just a job daddy does, this is a vocation, this is something he feels so protective of. He wants to protect his son, he want to protect the people in Ireland. But all we could do was reassure our son and tell him that we love him and we love him terribly.
“ . . . My 12-year-old clung to his giant of a father, clung, he held his father through fear of maybe not holding his father again. He said it over and over again, as we stroked his head, ‘daddy why, I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want you to be shot, please don’t go back out tomorrow’. And my husband held him in those strong arms that he holds and maintains every person in Northern Ireland. I watched a father and son last night and the pain for both of them was overwhelming. It has to stop.”
