Gun and knife attack shocks quiet island of Skye

It was a tragedy that robbed a family of its husband and father and shocked scattered communities on the quiet, picturesque Isle of Skye.

Finlay MacDonald left deep scars in the memories of those living on the island by killing his brother-in-law John MacKinnon and attempting to kill his own wife Rowena and the married couple John and Fay MacKenzie.

Families were torn apart by MacDonald’s shootings and stabbing attacks, which had lasting consequences for those living and working on Skye.

“Something precious was shattered that day,” said the Rev. Gordon Mathieson, minister of Sleat & Strath Free Church at the time of the incident.

“The emotion that best describes what happened that day was the betrayal of something precious – the bonds of family, community and brotherhood – torn apart by what happened.”

What happened in the attack of August 10, 2022?

Father-of-four MacDonald went on a violent rampage after seeing messages on his wife’s phone in which she told a friend she was planning to leave him.

He then stabbed Rowena, 34, multiple times at the family home in Tarskavaig, leaving holes in both lungs.

MacDonald stabbed Rowena nine times; her screams were warning her children, who watched their father continue the attack.

MacDonald then targeted his sister’s husband, John MacKinnon, shooting the 47-year-old dead in his kitchen in the nearby village of Teangue.

From there he traveled to the mainland Dornie village of Wester Ross and targeted John and Fay MacKenzie.

Witnesses told the hearing that MacDonald accused osteopath Mr MacKenzie of “ruining his life” with treatment for his back pain.

MacDonald was pursued into Dornie by two police cars but officers were told not to stop him. Eventually MacDonald shot both John and Fay, but they survived the attack.

‘No amount of preparation can help this’

Pastor Mathieson said there was a sense of shock that such horror could happen where they lived.

“This is not something you can prepare for,” he told STV News. “No amount of preparation can help with that. In terms of society, the people I felt most about were the girls who worked in the store.

“The store, the post office, the gas station are places where everyone meets, where you meet people, and for two, three, four days after the incident, that was all everyone talked about, and the team at the store was at the forefront of that.

“Sleat is also a very busy tourist area and as it instantly became national news, all the tourists coming in were talking about it and wondering how people were doing, what was going on.”

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MacDonald presented a special defense to murder – claiming that his “ability to determine or control his behavior was significantly impaired by mental abnormality” – and a judge said he could be convicted on an alternative charge of culpable homicide if the jury believed his defense. diminished responsibility.

The court heard MacDonald had been diagnosed with autism but prosecutor Liam Ewing KC told the jury he was “totally in control of himself and able to determine his actions”.

He said this was demonstrated by the “targeted, controlled behavior” he displayed after stabbing his wife “nine times” at their family home on Skye on the morning of August 10, 2022.

Police failed to stop MacDonald before second attack, court hears

The court heard police officers pursuing MacDonald failed to stop him before he carried out another attack.

Officers pursuing two marked police cars in the west of Scotland were instructed by an inspector in a control room more than 100 miles away in Dundee not to intervene and to wait for specialist firearms officers from Inverness to arrive.

Sergeant Christopher Tait, 36, estimated they followed the suspect for about seven to eight miles from the Isle of Skye to the village of Dornie in Ross-shire.

Tait, who was a police officer at the time, said he was first called to a stabbing on the island of Tarskavaig but received information about a shooting.

Tait told the High Court in Edinburgh that he was informed about a car belonging to MacDonald and said: “I noticed the defendant’s vehicle passing me.”

He made a three-point turn, contacted the control room and began following the Subaru Impreza before a police inspector in another car approached him.

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Officers followed the suspect across the Skye Bridge to the mainland and Dornie, where the driver accelerated before stopping outside a house.

Tait said he saw the driver at the top of the driveway, holding a firearm, aim it through the window of the house and open fire.

The gunman entered the house and Tait and his colleague ran down the driveway, yelling at him to drop his gun. They tasered the suspect and found an injured man and woman inside the home.

Tait said his blue lights and siren were on when he initially passed the Subaru and began pursuing it, but it was later turned off.

Donald Findlay KC, for the defence, asked him why and he replied: “I was instructed by the control room.”

He said the control room was in Dundee and he was told firearms officers would be arriving from Inverness.

Focus on gun legislation in Scotland

At the hearing, experts spoke about MacDonald’s undiagnosed autism and personality disorder.

But all in all, they concluded that the 41-year-old man was still able to tell right from wrong and control his behavior.

But some want to know how MacDonald, who some in the community thought was ineligible for a gun permit, was still granted a gun permit.

Former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, who sits as MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, wrote to the Scottish Affairs Committee following the shooting and asked them to review existing gun laws.

The horror sparked a parliamentary debate focused on gun legislation as islanders searched for answers.

“I really wanted this to be a wake-up call,” Blackford told STV News. “The simple fact of the matter is that when I looked at the statistics at the time, there were 60,000 gun licenses in the whole of Scotland and 150,000 in Wales and England, and 25% of those licenses were in the Highlands.

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“I think when you realize these statistics, for anyone to assume that these things don’t happen in rural communities in the Highlands and the Islands, I think they’re frankly kidding themselves.

“Oh my God, it was such a big deal for everyone on Skye but especially those in Sleat.

“Nobody expected that we would encounter such a situation, that there were many serious stabbings, life-threatening situations, and of course, that some people lost their lives as a result of what happened that day.

“It really shocked the whole community, and of course you’re talking about communities where everyone knows everyone else, close-knit communities, close-knit families. has been on society ever since.

“It is important that we get a sense of closure with the court case. But not only that, we are learning appropriate lessons about protecting people in all our communities from these things.

Close-knit communities in a state of complete disbelief

The total resident population of Skye’s Sleat peninsula is around 750, dispersed across more than a dozen villages.

“The families involved were both local families,” Pastor Mathieson told STV News.

“They were quite a big family, the MacKinnons were very well known and Lyn Anne’s family were also quite well known.

Police Scotland

“The MacDonalds were a pretty big family in Tarkasvaig, they had a big family in the community too.

“John had six children under the age of 20, Finlay and Rowena had four. They had ten children between them who were in primary school, so it was a very well-known, well-connected family in the community, and both families were very well-liked.

“The community in Sleat essentially stretches from anywhere south of Broadford to the ferry at Armadale and then south to Aird, so it’s about a 14-mile stretch.

“There are villages scattered all around and on the other side (of Sleat) there are three villages on a loop road – including Tarkasvaig where Finlay and Rowena live.”

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“On the day of the shooting, two colleagues of mine were living on the mainland and traveling to Sleat every morning for work, and through their network of contacts in and around Lochalsh in Dornie, where John and Fay lived, word started to get out. “I remember there had been a major incident in Dornie and the police response was escalating. I learned that it was increasing; helicopters and all kinds of things were coming and going.

“About half an hour later, a member of staff from the Sleat Community Trust’s public store, Armadale Stores, arrived and said there had been a shooting in Sleat, that John MacKinnon had been shot dead and that it was probably his brother. It was his mother-in-law, Finlay, who shot him.” .

“At this point I went from wearing my hat of Sleat community trust development officer to becoming a minister in the community and John’s wife, Lyn Anne, was also a member of my church. I knew them very well, so I immediately went to see if I could help, but when I heard that something was happening on the mainland, I felt great anxiety.

“I knew Finlay and immediately suspected something involving John Don and Fay because Finlay had real hostility towards John Don and had expressed this before.

“Finlay and Rowena have four children the same age as mine at school; Ditto Lyn Anne and John MacKinnon’s children were the same age as us.

“My last memory of John was actually meeting him a week before the shooting and they were going to Glasgow together as a family, laughing about going away together, it was just a casual relationship with them.”

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Councilor John Finlayson said: “I think it’s just about coming to terms with the seriousness of the events that have happened, there will still be people trying to come to terms with the seriousness of what happened.

“I don’t think we can rule out that after two years it’s all over and forgotten, because it’s certainly not like that.”