The following morning Bowen-Colthurst — an Anglo-Irish ultra-loyalist who was a scion of Dripsey Castle in Cork, and a cousin of the writer Elizabeth Bowen, ordered his sergeant to organise a firing squad to shoot dead Sheehy-Skeffington and the two pro-British journalists Dickson (a disabled Scotsman) and McIntyre. The three were shot in the back as they walked towards a wall in the barracks yard, then buried in shallow graves in the same yard. The British authorities tried to hush up the killings, and offered Bowen-Colthurst command of a regiment in Newry.