McAnespie was travelling to a match when he was killed by a gunshot wound to the back. He had just walked past a
British Army checkpoint. The British Army said that McAnespie had been hit when the weapon had discharged accidentally as a soldier was moving the gun with wet hands. Forensic evidence suggested that the fatal shot was one of three that had ricocheted off the road two metres behind McAnespie. McAnespie had previously said that he had been threatened by the security forces, and, according to his sister, soldiers had threatened to kill him on several occasions. McAnespie's family allege a cover-up by the
British government and question the likelihood of accidental discharge killing their son from a distance of 300 metres. His father, in an article in the
Observer Magazine, said that a soldier had stopped him some fifteen months before the shooting and told him, "I've a bullet here in the gun for your son Aidan". and the second on 27 May, when a van armed with a heavy machine gun sprayed the compound with automatic fire. It was abandoned by the British Army in 1998, just after the
Good Friday Agreement and its uncrewed facilities were demolished in 2008. ==Investigations==