Patrick Rooney

Patrick Rooney appears in 698. The Troubles: The Brink of Civil War (Part 2) as the nine-year-old killed in his bed when RUC armoured cars fired heavy machine guns into Divis flats during the August 1969 Belfast violence. The episode uses his death as a marker of how street conflict had become lethal for civilians.

The source says seven people were killed overall, about 1,000 injured, more than 100 suffered gunshot wounds, 200 homes were destroyed, and nearly 2,000 families fled. Rooney’s page therefore anchors the civilian-cost side of the Civil Rights To Street War Threshold.

Connections

• Belfast, RUC, and British Army - violence and intervention setting.
• State Policing Legitimacy Crisis, Sectarian Security Dilemma, and The Troubles - concepts and conflict context.