Killings at Coolacrease

In June 1921, the Kinnitty Company of the South Offaly No 2 Brigade IRA was ordered to construct a roadblock as part of county-wide military manoeuvres. At around midnight some of the Pearsons are said to have come to the roadblock and fired a shot or shots.^[2][5][8]

An eight-man IRA roadblock party selected a tree to fell for a roadblock on the Birr to Tullamore road, about halfway between the Pearsons' house and the village of Cadamstown.^[8][9][12] The roadside tree was at the point of boundary between the Pearsons' and a neighbouring farm about half a mile from their house. Two men were posted as sentries on the road to either side of the planned road-block. According to Paddy Heaney, at about midnight steps were heard approaching along the road from the direction of Pearsons' house.^[5] Sentry Mick Heaney issued the verbal challenge "Halt! Who goes there?"^[5] In response shots were fired at him, wounding him in the abdomen, arm and neck. The other sentry ran to his assistance and both returned fire. The other sentry, Tom Donnelly, was shot in the head. A retired RIC man who had been detained by them was also shot by the attackers. The abdominal injuries of Mick Heaney were serious, and he died a few years later. The retired RIC man was seriously injured in the back and legs, and lost a lung. In this version, the Pearsons had, as loyalists, become hostile to the local community as the war intensified, leading to their participation as combatants in the war.^[8]

According to one alternative account,^[2] the Pearsons fired a single shotgun cartridge in the air as a warning to rebels who were damaging their property while Alan Stanley wrote,^[13]"A cousin of my father's, Oliver Stanley, told me that after the tree had been felled, a number of men came to man the barricade thus created, and were shortly afterwards surprised by security people (police and auxiliaries presumably). He said that a brief gun battle had ensued and a man was injured on each side."

Following official investigation,^[8][9][14]Philip McConway articles in Officers' Battalion Council, into the identity of the men who attacked the road-block, Thomas Burke, the IRA Officer Commanding South Offaly No. 2 Brigade, ordered that the three brothers Richard, Abraham, and Sidney Pearson were to be executed and their houses destroyed. The orders to shoot the Pearsons would have come directly from IRA headquarters, and not made locally.^[15] However McConway indicates the decision to execute was made by Burke himself.

On 30 June 1921, about a week after the roadblock shootings, a party of about thirty IRA men arrested Richard and Abraham Pearson.^[8][16][17] They were taken to their house and held under guard there with other members of the family (their mother, three sisters, younger brother, and two female cousins), while the house was prepared to be burned. Their father William Pearson, and brother Sidney were away from home at the time. The brothers Richard and Abraham Pearson were shot by a firing squad of about ten men, and the house was burned.^[18] Richard and Abraham Pearson died after six hours and fourteen hours, respectively.

The medical reports^[8][19] declare that the death of Richard Pearson was due to haemorrhage and shock caused by gunshot wounds to the left shoulder, right groin, right buttock, left lower leg and to the back; the most serious being the wound to the right groin. In the case of Abraham Pearson, death was declared to be the result of shock from gunshot wounds to the left cheek, left shoulder, left thigh, lower third of left leg and through the abdomen.

An appendix^[10][19][20] to the report of the British Military Court of Enquiry into the events^[19] states: "It is said by the C.I." [County Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary] "Queens County that the two Pearson boys a few days previously had seen two men felling a tree on their land adjoining the road. Had told the men concerned to go away, and when they refused had fetched two guns and fired and wounded two Sinn Feiners, one of whom it is believed died. It is further rumoured that when the farm house was burning, two guns fell out of the roof." The import of this information and non-inclusion in a controversial RTE television documentary was debated in the press in 2007.^[21][22][23]

On 9 July 1921, the British Government in Dublin Castle issued a statement^[8][24] claiming that an atrocity had been committed against the Pearsons. Claims of murder and atrocity were made by William Stanley, "a loyalist fugitive and distant cousin of the Pearsons. He had been ordered out of Luggacurran in County Laois by the IRA" after allegedly becoming embroiled in a plot with the auxiliaries to arrest an IRA volunteer.^[8][9] He was living under an assumed name, "Jimmy Bradley", at the time of the roadblock incident and escaped by running away when the Pearson brothers were arrested.

Stanley's son, Alan Stanley, argued that the Pearsons were innocent farmers, that they did not shoot anybody at the roadblock, and that they were murdered by people who wanted to take their land.^[2][3] These claims have been challenged.^{[20][25][26][27][28]}

A controversial programme about the incident was broadcast by the Irish broadcaster RTÉ on 23 October 2007,^[29] giving rise to considerable discussion and debate.^[30] Complaints against the programme were rejected by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.^[31] In addition to media discussion, the Aubane Historical Society complained to Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern, RTÉ Director General Cathal Goan and RTÉ Director of Programmes, Claire Duignan.^[23]

Coolacrease: The True Story of the Pearson Executions was published in 2008 by the Aubane Historical Society and historians from Offaly.^[32][33] It was, amongst other things, critical of the RTÉ documentary. The book was reviewed by Steven King in the Sunday Business Post, November 2008,^[34] by Joost Augusteijn in History Ireland Magazine,^[35] (March/April 2009) and in Autumn 2009 by Tom Wall in the Dublin Review of Books,^[36] giving rise to further discussion.^[37]