A BELFAST man is demanding to know why loyalist paramilitaries gunned down his parents at their home more than 40 years ago in a shocking murder for which nobody has been brought to justice.

Seamus McDonald was just 18 months old when the so-called Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) burst into their Newtownabbey home, ripping his baby sister from their mother’s arms before shooting her and their father at point-blank range.

The UFF claimed that the couple were associated with the IRA, but Mr McDonald said this was a lie and that his pacifist parents were “soft targets” for the loyalists.

Mr McDonald has pieced together what happened from what others have told him. 

He told the Belfast Telegraph that he was in a playpen in the living room when the gunmen arrived posing as friends of his father.

After shooting his dad, “the other guy took my baby sister out of my mum’s arms and put her in the playpen beside me and shot my mum at point-blank range.

“They didn’t have any bullets left in their guns when they had finished shooting my parents,” he explained.

“They found my mother in a pool of blood, her hand outstretched to the playpen, out to us.

“Later, someone told me that her last words were ‘why us?’”

He said that he knows he will never receive justice for the “vile killings” whose “shadow” hangs over him still.

But Mr McDonald wants answers, closure and compensation.

It comes as British collusion with loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles comes under closer scrutiny.

Thousands took to the streets of Belfast earlier this month as part of the Time for Truth campaign which seeks justice after the continued failure of the British state to investigate historical crimes in the north of Ireland.