A CORKMAN yesterday spoke of his shock as he learned the man behind the killing spree in Cumbria was Derrick Bird with whom he had worked for 18 months and that another man he knew well was among his victims.
John Coughlan, a freelance journalist from Mayfield in Cork city, yesterday told how he had worked beside Derrick Bird at the Sellafield nuclear power station in 1989 and would occasionally meet him in later years when Bird would invite him for a drink.
“I got a huge shock – I had lived and worked in Cumbria for several years. The first I heard about it was when I got a call around 11am from my best friend, Tom Newell, to tell me that people had been killed and his sister, Hazel, had come upon the gunman.
“Hazel was walking down a path near her home in Egremont when she saw Derrick put something in the boot of his car. As she got closer, he just stared at her before jumping into the car and speeding off and he then shot two people at the end of the town.
“Hazel ended up holding one of the dying women in her arms for 10 minutes. Tom was after telling me all this so the minute I came off the phone from him, I turned on Sky News to see what was happening . . .
“I was absolutely shocked . . . I just couldn’t believe it, the guy was so quiet and nice. To work alongside him and talk to him, you would never think he could do something like this.”
Coughlan, who later worked for the Whitehaven News covering rugby league, received another shock when he learned one of the victims was former Workington Town rugby league player Gary Purdham, whom he had interviewed. “Gary had played with Workington so I knew him well – he had gone farming after retiring from rugby league and he was trimming hedges with his uncle near Gosforth when Derrick pulled up in his car and shot him in the head.
Coughlan’s wife, Gloria, is from Cleatermoor in Cumbria.
“It’s such a closely knit community there and they’ve been through such a lot in the last year what with the floods that devastated the place and they had a bad bus crash last week which claimed the lives of some young people and now this – it’s just unbelievable.”
