Northern Ireland police arrested two men Saturday suspected of killing journalist Lyra McKee.
McKee, 29, was shot Thursday while observing rioting in Londonderry in Northern Ireland, in what police are now calling “a terrorist incident”.
A prominent freelance reporter, McKee had been featured in Buzzfeed News and The Atlantic, among others.
She gained notoriety for a particularly moving 2014 blog post, “Letter to my 14 year old self,” detailing the trials she faced growing up in Belfast as a gay young woman. She had recently written a book called “The Lost Boys,” a novel coming out next year that explores the disappearance of many boys and young men during the Troubles, a period of Irish violence that ended in a peace treaty in 1998.
Northern Ireland police had released footage of McKee during her final moments. Standing close to a police vehicle, she raised her cellphone to record the protests around her. Shots fired nearby and wounded her, and she died shortly after. Police released the video in the hope that the public could assist in finding the shooters.
The two suspects, who are 18 and 19 years old, were reportedly Republican dissidents. Riots had broken out when police raided the neighborhood under suspicion that a group of militants, calling itself New IRA, had stockpiled firearms and explosives. Police feared the group would carry out several attacks over Easter weekend, which also commemorates the 21-year-old Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland between Irish and U.K. governments and Northern Ireland’s splintered political parties.
Leaders publicly condemned McKee’s killing Thursday.
The nearly 40-year violent conflict raged in a majority-Protestant Northern Ireland, which wanted to remain in the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland, mostly Catholics, wanted a unified Ireland separate from the United Kingdom.
The New IRA was formed in 2012 by various political groups that strongly opposed the Good Friday peace agreement, a landmark agreement between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The dissidents believe Ireland should be an independent republic from the U.K., free to create their own sovereignty, and has been blamed for recent terrorist attacks in and around Belfast.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar praised McKee as a journalist and activist, saying she changed lives.
“We stand with you as strong as your walls and for as long as they stand,” he said.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins, who signed a condolence book at Belfast City Hall for McKee, said, “The loss of a journalist at any time in any part of the world is an attack on truth itself.”
McKee’s partner, Sara Canning, helped organize a vigil Friday and addressed a community of mourners, saying the murder “has left me without the love of my life, the woman I was planning to grow old with.”
A Catholic priest, Joseph Gormley, administered McKee’s last rites and told the BBC that the riot was orchestrated by a small militant group “who want to play political games with our lives.”
Gormley said he and many community leaders across Northern Ireland had sought peace with the militant group, but they were not successful.
