I couldn’t cope with seeing Sinn Fein’s new MLA on TV or radio… I’d be thinking all the time: your father killed my father
The Belfast Telegraph
2016-12-16
Stephanie Bell
Jayne Olorunda’s dad was killed by an IRA bomber whose daughter has been made a Sinn Fein MLA. Jayne tells Stephanie Bell this is the last straw and her family is now set to quit Northern Ireland
News that the daughter of the IRA man who killed her father is to take a seat for Sinn Fein in Stormont has left Belfast author and community worker Jayne Olorunda and her family determined to leave Northern Ireland. The distraught 38-year-old says she couldn’t bear to see new MLA Orlaithi Flynn in the news now that she had been appointed by Sinn Fein to replace Jennifer McCann in the Colin area of west Belfast.
Jayne was only two when her Nigerian-born father Max Olorunda was killed by an IRA incendiary bomb which detonated prematurely in Dunmurry on a train travelling from Ballymena to Belfast in January 1980.
She says her mother Gabrielle (66) has never got over it and to this day suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome.
Orlaithi Flynn
Orlaithi Flynn’s father Patrick Flynn was convicted of double manslaughter and possession of explosives for the attack.
In a heartbreaking interview, Jayne revealed how her family has also suffered years of racial hatred and had planned to leave Northern Ireland last month to try and escape the abuse…
…She has spent most of her life working in the community and has also written a powerful book called Legacy which tells the story of how her family were plagued by racism, poverty and grief after the death of her father.
Her father Max (35), an accountant, had been visiting a client in Ballymena and was on the train when the IRA prematurely detonated a device on January 17, 1980.
The blast engulfed a carriage of the train killing her father, as well as 17-year-old Protestant student Mark Cochrane and one of the bombers, Kevin Delaney (26)…
Gabrielle and Max Olorunda
Read the entire article here.
