Trevor King

Trevor James King, also known as "Kingso" (c. 1953 – 9 July 1994), was a British Ulster loyalist and a senior member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). He was commander of the UVF's "B" Company, 1st Belfast Battalion, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel. On 16 June 1994, he was one of three UVF men gunned down by the Irish National Liberation Army as he stood on the corner of Spier's Place and the Shankill Road in West Belfast, close to the UVF headquarters. His companion Colin Craig was killed on the spot, and David Hamilton, who was seriously wounded, died the next day in hospital. King was also badly injured; he lived for three weeks on a life-support machine before making the decision himself to turn it off.

Two days after the shooting, the UVF retaliated against Irish nationalists by carrying out the Loughinisland massacre against the Heights Bar, in which six Catholic customers died as they watched the Republic of Ireland play Italy in the World Cup football match.

There are several murals in the Shankill Road area commemorating King. One of these is a mural and plaque dedicated to him, David Hamiliton and William "Frenchie" Marchant, which stands at the Spiers Place and Shankill Road junction. An oversized mural painted on the gable end of a house in Disraeli Street, Woodvale, features a portrait of King with an inscription from a poem by Siegfried Sassoon.

King was born in about 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland to an Ulster Protestant family. He joined the illegal Ulster loyalist paramilitary organisation the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in the early 1970s whilst still in his teens. He was one of the gunmen who took part in the "Battle at Springmartin" on the night of 13 May 1972 when the UVF engaged the Provisional IRA in fierce gun battles at the interface area between the Protestant Springmartin and the Catholic Ballymurphy housing estates. He was arrested that same night by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) after he and another young man were caught working with a rifle bolt in the rear yard of a house in Blackmountain Pass. The rifle had jammed and the men had been attempting to free its bolt. Inside a bedroom, police found three Steyr rifles, ammunition and illuminating flares. Several hours earlier the UVF had exploded a car bomb outside Kelly's Bar on Whiterock Road and then taken up sniping positions from high-rise flats in Springmartin. The IRA responded by shooting at British Army troops who arrived on the scene before exchanging gunfire with the UVF snipers. That Saturday night saw the most violent gun battles since the suspension of Stormont and imposition of Direct Rule from London. Five people died in the clashes which continued on 14 May; these deaths included British soldier Alan Buckley, and teenagers John Pedlow (17), Michael Magee (15), and Martha Campbell (13).

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