Police could have stopped 1988 Derry bomb, Ombudsman reports
Police in the North could have prevented an IRA booby trap bombing in Derry 25 years ago in which three people died, a new report claims.
A report has found RUC officers failed to alert people in the area about their fears of a device before it exploded in August in 1988.
It was intended to kill members of an army search team, but was triggered instead by three neighbours who had gone to check on a friend.
"While accepting that the responsibility for the murders rests solely with those who planted the bomb ... the police were aware and had information that there was a bomb in the vicinty," said Michael Maguire from the Police Ombudsman in the North.
"[They] could have and should have done more to warn the local community."
The daughter of one victim, Eugene Dalton, said the report came as a relief.
"There is a sense of relief that at last we've been listened to, because in the last report that we had got we had been left with a whole lot more questions than we had answers," Rosaleen Quigley said.
