The Hoods: Crime and Punishment in Belfast

Heather Hamill

On January 16, 1999, the headline in the Andersonstown News, West Bel- fast’s local newspaper, read “Joyriding: The scourge returns.” The paper reported that the evening before, forty-two stolen cars were abandoned in West Belfast, “many of them burned out, while others were seriously damaged or vandalised.”1 There followed a series of articles over the fol- lowing months detailing the damage caused by young people driving stolen cars recklessly and often under the influence of alcohol and drugs. This included the tragic death of Patrick Hanna, who was killed when a stolen car traveling at approximately 100 mph jumped the pavement in a residential area and struck him. An eyewitness described what happened afterward: “Other joyriders returned shortly after the ambulance and po- lice left and started doing hand-brake turns at the police tape where the man had been killed. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be that cruel and heartless.”2 This incident followed a similar accident in which seven- year-old Eamon Armstrong was killed when he, too, was struck by a sto- len car. His mother and her partner were seriously injured: “With two deaths and so many injuries in the space of such a short time, there’s a real sense that the joyriders have taken over the streets and that anyone could be the next victim,”3 reported the Andersonstown News. When joy- riders smashed a stolen car into a school bus carrying pupils to school during rush hour traffic, the culprits were condemned as “worse than irre- sponsible.”4 In March 2000, District Nurse Maureen Sheehan was killed when a car driven by a joyrider caused a three-car collision on the Falls Road. In the same week, John McDonald, another local resident, was killed in a hit-and-run accident.

University of Oxford