Loyalist thugs singled out Catholic Paul McNally as he left a bookies near his Ardoyne home in north Belfast on the afternoon of Saturday June 5 1976.
It was a day, sadly only too typical of the height of the Troubles, which began with murder and ended with a mounting death toll.
Indeed that weekend, over a 48-hour period, 10 people were killed and numerous injured in a spate of bombings and gun attacks, many victims randomly targeted as they went about their daily business.
A 26-year-old plumber, Mr McNally was shot several times by two loyalist gunmen at the junction of Brompton Park and the Crumlin Road.
Paul lost his battle for life two days later – his killers widowing his young wife Hazel and ensuring his newborn son Damien would only know his father from photographs and family stories.
"When my father was dying he said to her 'Hazel, will you get them for me, will you get them?'," Damien says.
"My dad was pleading with her, he was panicking about who was going to look after us.
"But no effort was made (by police) to catch my dad's killers."
Before his death the couple had suffered the terrible loss of their young daughter Pauline to cot death in 1972, but had started to look to the future with the new addition to the family.
But sectarian killers robbed them of that hope, leaving a devastated Hazel to bring up Damien and his older sister Karen, who was just four years old when her father was gunned down.
"My mum was left at 24 years of age with two kids and no help apart from family support," Damien says.
"Because of the time it was, people couldn't understand what people's needs were.
"Mum had so much to deal with losing her daughter and her husband within two years. I grew up with the sense of loss in my life and there has been quite a lot of deaths in the family since then.
"When my grandmother died in 2000, my direct link to my father had gone."
Despite his father's murder, Damien had a happy childhood with his mother who at one stage was holding down three jobs to support the family.
"I had a happy childhood. We never had much money or anything but because mum worked hard we didn't need anything," he says.
"I went to St Louis in Ballymena and St Malachy's College (north Belfast), and a lot of the families were quite well off. It was then you realised how hard it was, not for me, but my mum to raise us.
"My mum is an auxiliary nurse at the Mater Hospital and every day she remembers clearly when my dad was taken in and died.
"She is only beginning to do things now, like the nursing degree she should have been able to do when she was younger.
"Because of the situation she found herself in she just couldn't do those things. She has made a lot of sacrifices."
But growing up without a father was not easy.
"I was quiet child because I never had a father figure," he says.
"It (father's murder) was always with me from a very, very early age. The family would talk about it and obviously mum would get upset sometimes thinking about him.
"It has always been difficult for me to articulate exactly how it affected me because there is no before and after there. I didn't have a dad there to miss but I did feel a lot more apprehensive about things.
"When I see friends doing things with their fathers, that's when it hits me. You miss out on so much.
"There was never a time when mum sat me down and told me dad had been killed. I picked it up subconsciously from a very young age.
"It is something, to be honest, I am only coming to terms with now. I am 27 now, I'm older now than my dad was when he was killed. It is only now that it has hit me how short his life was.
"My dad was just a quiet, hardworking fella. But there are always questions put on somebody's character.
"Mum has had people saying in the past to her that dad wasn't killed for no reason. You wonder how widespread that kind of prejudice is."
As Damien grew older, his suspicion grew of the police's handling of the investigation into his father's murder, so much so that last September he contacted the Police Ombudsman's office over his concerns.
It has been previously reported that the UFF/UDA killed his father, but no group claimed responsibility at the time and police failed to shed any light on which organisation was behind the murder, only to confirm that it was loyalists.
Despite the gun believed to have been used by the killers found near the scene and the RUC informing the family four weeks after the murder that the gunmen had fled to Scotland, no-one has ever been brought to justice.
And as the debate about 'closure' for hundreds of families of loved ones whose murders have yet to be solved intensifies amid a review of over 1,800 cases, Damien is naturally angry.
The civil servant, who married in July, felt compelled to speak out following a recent interview in the Irish News with Chief Constable Hugh Orde.
"I do get bored about talking about what we could have done in the past – it just shows the absolute determination of this place not to move on. I'm far more interested in moving on," Mr Orde said at the time.
The Chief Constable has already admitted that the killers behind the unsolved paramilitary murders were unlikely to be caught and suggested a truth commission as a form of closure for the relatives of victims.
Mr Orde has said there were cases were "no doubt we could have done better. The vast majority of cops did their honest best".
Damien, who is on the management committee of the cross-community Wave Trauma Centre, also wants to move on but feels police should admit that the investigation of his father's murder was inadequate.
"It makes you feel unimportant, ignored. I can't speak for other families, but I get the impression that a lot of families would be reluctant to say how they feel about what happened to them because they could be accused of impeding progress," he says.
"I was very reluctant to talk about my dad because there are so many in the same boat as me and you don't want to make it out as if your case is more important than anyone else's.
"I don't think being told four weeks after the event that they (the killers) got away constitutes a proper investigation."
Twenty-seven years after his father's murder, Damien is not interested in anyone being brought to book for the killing.
"I am not angry at loyalists but the fact that there was no proper police investigation," he says.
"I understand that a lot of people at the time were very young and drawn into the whole situation (violence).
"They were probably directed in a sense by senior people. You could term everybody as a victim in that sense.
"When people think about the Troubles, they are only going to think about the bigger atrocities like Omagh, Shankill and Enniskillen bombings.
"For the rest of the people killed individually, that builds up their sense that they have been forgotten.
"Because of that you are going to have less pressure felt on whatever bodies and police, that (individual murder) is not as important because there was only one person killed."
Damien believes that an acknowledgment from the police that past cases were not properly investigated could help boost confidence in the new policing arrangements.
"I can understand Hugh Orde's position where he comes in and is trying to reform the police and bring them forward," he says.
"But I think there should be some kind of individual acknowledgement that enough had not been done.
"It would definitely help people the new (policing) arrangements.
"If it isn't dealt with in a proper manner, they (police) are not going to learn from mistakes in the past to improve future performance."
