24/07/2026
July 24th 1990
Three RUC officers and a nun were killed in an IRA landmine explosion on Killylea Road outside Armagh city, close to the historic site of Navan Fort. The three officers based in Caledon were in an unmarked police car. The nun, Sister Catherine Dunne, was in a car going the opposite direction. The bomb left a crater 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The bomb had been placed in a culvert and a command wire was found leading from the scene. A man who was nearby said a large boulder crashed into the ground, narrowly missing his nine year old son.
Those officers killed were David Sterritt, Joshua Cyril Willis and William Hanson
Two men were convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. They were released in July 2000, one of them on July 24, the tenth anniversary of the killing of the four victims. ‘It’s sickening,’ said David Sterritt’s father. ‘It is just rubbing salt into the wounds. How could they not realise what July 24 means to us as a family. It’s a heart breaking day. We knew that they would be due for early release and we have tried to come to terms with that, hard as it is. But to learn that they are getting out on the anniversary of David’s death is agony.’
David Sterritt aged 34 from Newry Street, Markethill. A reserve RUC Constable and former member of UDR. David was a member of Ballylane True Blues Orange Lodge, LOL 479, district 10.
Cyril Willis was a member of Caledon Orange Lodge, LOL 177, district 7.
