Background: Thomas Devlin and two of his friends, one a Catholic, the other a Protestant, were at his home on Somerton Road in north Belfast on Wednesday night playing computer games and music. "Just doing what teenage boys do," according to the 15-year-old's mother Penny Holloway.
About 11.15pm the boys decided to walk to the Esso garage on the Antrim Road to buy crisps, Coke and sweets. They made their purchases and then set off home again, a distance of only 500m.
They crossed the Antrim Road on to the Fort William Park road. At that stage they would have some suspicions, some initial concerns. As they walked the 180m to the turn for Somerton Road they probably realised two men in their teens or early 20s, wearing hoods and walking a dog, were following them.
The three young boys turned back on to Somerton Road, a leafy middle-class area where Catholic Bishop Patrick Walsh lives. When the "hoodies", as they are called in Belfast, followed them on to the road, you can imagine the boys' fear.
But they were nearly home. Then 180m up Somerton Road the killers struck. Thomas was stabbed in the back at least five times in what was described as a "frenzied" attack. The boys tried to defend themselves, according to Det Supt Colin Sturgeon of the PSNI.
One of Thomas's friends was also stabbed but it seems a small backpack he was wearing may have saved him. The other boy escaped uninjured.
Minutes later another young man walking in the area saw the "hoodies" and the dog heading towards nearby Lansdowne Road. "Look away or you will get the same," one of the killers said to the man, who was unaware of the earlier stabbing, according to Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly.
Three males from loyalist areas of north Belfast were arrested yesterday, one of them a juvenile. Det Supt Sturgeon said "currently" police viewed the attack as "random". The boys did nothing and said nothing to provoke or in any way annoy the killers. At the murder scene the police allowed people to place flowers. Sinéad Burns, a 15-year-old friend of Thomas, laid a bouquet. "We are all distraught," she said. "Thomas was so lovely, friendly, kind and nice. It is just so awful."
Mr Kelly said he didn't want to stir community tensions unnecessarily but he believed the motivation was sectarian. Somehow the killers figured Thomas and his friends for Catholics and arbitrarily decided to attack them, he suspected. A doctor who came on the scene tried for 30 minutes to revive Thomas, but failed. "We don't know who he is but we want so much to thank him," said Penny in the sitting room of her home, only 180m from the taped-off murder scene.
Beside her sat her husband Jim Devlin. He's an engineer with the BBC in Belfast and is familiar with the ways of journalism and people calling to stricken homes after terrible events. "You never think it is going to come to your own doorstep," he said.
A terrible time lies ahead for Penny and Jim and their two other children, 19-year-old twins, James who is studying computing in university in Glasgow, and Megan who is studying pharmaceutical science in Liverpool. But Thomas's parents were anxious to talk. "Thomas's ambition in life was to make a million, at least that's what he told us," said Jim, with a smile.
"Thomas was a kind, helpful, good-hearted, sharp, bright boy," added Penny, a Welsh woman working for the Labour Relations Agency. "He was a pupil at Belfast Royal Academy. He was more into music than sport, liked the Goth scene, liked to wear black, played the horn at school." They couldn't even begin to think how or why their son could have been so viciously attacked.
"We can't understand how you can have people wandering the streets with knives looking for people to attack," said Penny.
