Too painful to see murder scene

THE grieving son of a builder murdered in Camden High Street has told how, nearly three years after the killing, his family still find it too painful to visit the murder scene.
Tearful relatives of Thomas Breen, who was killed by a stab wound to the chest in August 2002, flew from Belfast to London on Tuesday morning to attend an inquest into the 50-year-old’s death.
St Pancras coroner Dr Andrew Reid recorded a verdict of unlawful killing after hearing how Mr Breen was attacked at the junction with Hawley Road, close to a fast-food stand, in Camden Town.
Nobody has been charged and it remains the only unsolved murder from a chilling series of six killings in the summer of 2002 – deaths which earned the route linking Camden Town, Chalk Farm and Kentish Town the nickname of ‘Murder Mile’.
The dead man’s son Stephen said after Tuesday’s brief inquest hearing: “It brings back terrible memories. We do not care to go to Camden Town, it would be too hard. We have friends who leave flowers there for my father.”
Stephen, a journalist, added: “The last time, we were here to identify my father. It was so hard. Coming back has been another hurdle we have had to face.”
The victim’s wife Lorraine and other relatives sat at the front of the court as Detective Sergeant Paul Armstrong insisted that the police investigation had not been closed.
He told the inquest Mr Breen had been drinking with a friend, Brian McGarry, at the Boston Arms in Tufnell Park and College Arms in Camden Town on the day of the attack, before buying food from Burger King in Camden High Street.
Soon afterwards, both men were slashed by a knifeman, a white suspect in his 30s. The killer was with another man who is not thought to have been the aggressor and whom police still hope to trace.
While Mr McGarry escaped with a punctured thigh, Mr Breen’s injury was more serious and, although passers-by tried to help him, he died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
The inquest heard that a CCTV camera was pointing the wrong way to capture the attack. Cash rewards and an efit of a suspect have failed to find the murderer.
Mr Breen, a father-of-two, had been contracted to work on a site in London and had travelled from the family home in Downpatrick, near Belfast.