Grief, love, and remembrance - a sister's tribute to the brother killed in Dunblane shooting

This particular episode saw Ross, then aged four, find adventure even in the most staid of environments. It led him away from his great-grandmother’s bedside, down the adjoining corridor, and into another room. When he eventually retraced his steps back, he was wearing a broad grin, and carrying a generous haul of snacks. After being asked by his mum and dad where he’d got the food, he explained, perfectly reasonably, that he’d simply made friends with an old lady next door.

“Ross was curious and maybe a little mischievous, and he would talk to anyone,” his sister Rachael, explained. “Everyone I’ve ever spoken to says he was very outgoing, very fun loving and had a sparkling quality. It was all these things that made him who he was.”

This Friday will mark exactly three decades since the world was left a little less bright by the loss of that endearing boy with the winning smile and an inimitable way of charming everyone he met. Shortly after 9.30am on 13 March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, armed with four handguns and 743 rounds and ammunition, walked into Dunblane Primary’s gym hall. There, he killed Ross, 15 of his Primary One classmates, and their teacher, Gwen Mayor, before turning his gun on himself. A further 12 children and three adults were injured.

The deadliest firearms atrocity in the UK was over in the space of less than four minutes, yet cast a shadow that has spanned generations. Those left behind have had to navigate a warren of profound grief. And for a select few who were not there, the journey of loss and remembrance has also been a central part of their lives.

Rachael’s journey is ongoing. She and her twin sister, Beth, were denied the privilege of knowing her eldest brother, having been born just 14 months after Dunblane. Instead, she has relied on the stories and anecdotes of those who cherished him, piecing together the fragments and memories of a young life that had only just begun.

Now an articulate young woman of 28, she has never before spoken publicly about Dunblane or the barbaric act inflicted on her family, who had only moved to the central Scotland town from Ayr in the autumn of 1995. But ahead of the 30th anniversary, she wants to ensure that new generations remember Ross, his classmates, their teacher, and the hard-won battles for gun reform that arose from the loss of their lives.

’I felt I’ve always known Ross’

It is testament to the love and candour with which the Irvines raised their three other children - the sisters’ older brother, Scott, was three at the time his best friend was murdered - that to this day, Rachael cannot pinpoint exactly when or how she first became aware of what transpired that cold March morning.

A portrait of Ross has always adorned the living room wall of their family home, and his presence was never questioned. The family always spoke about him, sharing photographs and home videos that invited laughter, and of course, tears too.

“I’m sure somewhere along the way, my parents did tell me in those early years what happened, but I’ve just felt I’ve always known Ross,” she reflected over coffee in Edinburgh, where she now lives. “There were times when we got older that we asked more specific questions, and my parents did such a good job of never hiding anything. Ross was always talked about, he was always visible.

“They let us come to them and ask the right questions, they created that environment. In terms of what actually happened in Dunblane, they made us aware of it. It’s something that does define you in the sense that it’s always part of you, but they made sure it wasn’t something that stopped us from growing as people.”

For the small band of Dunblane siblings born after the shooting, or who were too young at the time to comprehend what had happened, the experience of growing up in the aftermath of such a dreadful loss is intensely complex. Some, such as Jack Crozier, who was aged just two when his sister, Emma, was killed, have spoken of how that absence was always felt, knowing that someone was missing.

Rachael and her family found solace in the rituals of commemoration. Growing up, she would draw pictures to take to Ross’s grave at Ayr Cemetery, and once old enough, she and her siblings would help to wash down the marble of his headstone, or and rake the leaves that had fallen around it. Autumn was always the best time, for that was when the horse chestnut trees would give up their bounty of conkers. “I remember I used to lie back on the grass and look up to the sky through the trees,” she recalled. “They are such vivid memories, and it was never a morbid thing. To this day, I still enjoy going to visit.”

Yet so too, Rachael admits that being born the year after Ross was taken has exacted an emotional toll. “You feel a bit of guilt sometimes - a feeling that I wasn’t there, and my parents and Scott were,” she explained. “I don’t ever want to seem like I’m trying to pretend to understand what they went through. But I think I’ve got to a point now where I’ve processed things a bit more.”

The empty top bunk

As well as speaking publicly for the first time about her and her family’s experience, Rachael has written a poem, ‘The Empty Top Bunk’, published in today’s Scotland on Sunday. Reflecting on her eldest brother and the pain of his loss, the imagery dotted throughout its five stanzas offer a snapshot of a vibrant young life frozen in time, forever five. It captures an age of joy and innocence, coupled with a growing desire for independence. As Rachael’s words in the opening lines put it, ‘Old enough to sit in the sledge without dad / too young to remember the gloves mum left out’.

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While the poem remembers the toys and pastimes Ross held dear, from dinosaurs through to Thunderbirds, it is the words depicting the void left by his death left that carry the greatest emotional resonance: the empty top bunk bed of the title; the red and yellow school bag in the attic; and most movingly of all, the school uniform, discovered ‘Neatly folded and tucked under desks / Just how your teacher taught you, how you practised’.

Rachael said she did not sit down with the intention of writing such a deeply personal piece. She was daydreaming one day, and the images started to appear - the legacy of a lifetime of remembrance. It was a poem decades in the making. When she started to put down the words, they came quickly. Within half an hour, her tribute was complete. “It all just threaded together,” she said.

Even for someone who has enjoyed creative writing her whole life, and whose maternal grandmother was a published author, the decision to write, and above all, share the work, is a “significant” and cathartic moment. The dawning of the 30th anniversary, Rachael said, felt like the “right time.”

“Writing about something so personal, and sharing it, is quite a big step for me,” she explained. “I’ve always been quite private in speaking about Dunblane - that’s the nature of my family and myself. I wanted to reflect not just my experience, but theirs too, and I wanted to make sure I was getting it right. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re born after a tragedy like Dunblane - you’re sort of in a state of limbo, and I think my sister would say the same thing.”

She added: “Because I wasn’t there and didn’t know Ross, I didn’t experience what it was like when he died. But I was born into a lot of that grief within my family, and I feel that grief, and I also feel love. If life had been different, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel those emotions about someone you never met, yet when I think of Ross, that’s how I feel.”

The letters from wellwishers the world over

Together with Beth and Scott, Rachael never attended Dunblane Primary. Instead, they went to the town’s Newton Primary, just half a mile away. By the time she was seven, Ian’s work meant the family relocated to Inverness. But her formative memories of life in the town are fond. “It was a very normal childhood I had in Dunblane, a great childhood,” she acknowledged. “That in itself is complicated. When I go back, I feel so nostalgic, I think about the library we used to go to, the parks we used to visit, and the river Allan. They are fond memories. But I know for my parents, it’s different.”

Recently, she has been retracing Allison and Ian’s own experience, revisiting the correspondence that was sent to them from wellwishers around the world, and which they have held onto ever since. One letter was from a poet in the US who had lost her five year-old son and who also sent some of her works which explored what it means to be a grieving parent. It was, Rachael said, a source of comfort for her parents, and thirty years on, for her too. “I remember when I read it, I thought, ‘This person understands’,” she said. “I think what I’ve realised is that it’s the small, ordinary moments in life that mean a lot, and the way people show up.

“I remember dad telling me how he was doing a kitchen renovation at our home in Dunblane and there were boxes everywhere. One day, one of his colleagues showed up and said their employer was going to finish the job for him, and they put our family up in a hotel while the renovations were completed.

“They weren’t expecting a pat on the back. If anything, it perhaps came from a place where they were feeling uncomfortable about knowing how to help or respond. For my parents, it meant so much.”

The legacy of Dunblane has shaped Rachael’s life in other ways, some of which are only now becoming clear. She graduated with a law degree from the University of Glasgow before completing an MSc in psychological studies at the University of Aberdeen, and has put both disciplines to good use in her career to date, working at the Scottish Law Commission before joining the Scottish Government. In hindsight, she says, her interest in the law and justice may have been piqued by what happened to her family.

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“When I was at the commission working on the Homicide (Scotland) Bill, it made me think about Dunblane, and how it was still sometimes difficult for me to think about what happened in terms of a crime,” she explained. “That might sound strange, but there was no prosecution afterwards. Obviously I knew Ross had been murdered, but I never really thought about it in terms of the law - it almost came as a surprise to me that I hadn’t put that together, or how it might have led me into the career I’ve pursued.

“I have this feeling - and I know my siblings share this too - of wanting to ensure things are fair in the world. When you get older, you realise that’s not always going to be possible, but in the work I’ve done, I’d tried to do that in my own small way in my little corner of the world. I’m sure a lot of that comes from how my life has been shaped by Dunblane. I care about things being just.”

The ongoing battle around gun control

Rachael, together with Beth, has also taken direct steps to ensure the victories achieved by the Dunblane families and the Snowdrop Campaign around gun control legislation continue to be fiercely guarded. Both women have become members of the Gun Control Network (GCN), the campaign group co-founded by Dr Mick North, who lost his five year-old daughter, Sophie, at Dunblane.

For the past thirty years the small group, now a registered charity, has been an ever vigilant voice, even when the glare of the media spotlight has faded from view. To this day, the GCN draws on its modest resources to diligently campaign and lobby around the continuing need for strict gun controls. It has pushed for further legislative changes and flagged concerns around loopholes in the statute books, helping to put in place an air weapon licensing regime in Scotland, and expediting the introduction of tighter control over the sale and use of imitation weapons. All the while, it has collated data detailing the ruinous impact of fatal gun incidents throughout the UK. Its most recent annual analysis indicated that there were 46 recorded gun deaths in 2024/25, with the youngest victim aged just eight.

The decision to join the group, said Rachael, was borne largely out of ongoing frustration and concern at the levels of gun violence in the US, where her mother spent her formative years. Together with the rest of her family, she added her name to a letter of solidarity and support to the pupils of Majority Stoneman Douglas High, the Florida school where 17 people - 14 of them children - died in a 2018 shooting. Eight years on, she, like so many others, is exasperated as to why more has not been done to prevent future mass murders.

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“It’s very sad to see,” she said. “I know it’s a different culture, a different history, and different values to a certain extent, but when so many people are lost to gun violence, you do wonder how so little action can be taken.

“It’s not just the US. We are seeing some backsliding in terms of gun control protections. You only have to look at Australia, which used to be seen as the gold standard. But gun ownership is on the rise there, and we’ve seen gun violence there and in other parts of Europe. You have to continue to protect these laws, and not ever take it for granted that it will always be this way.”

That desire to prevent complacency creeping in, reject compromise, and ensure the law stands firm, is something Rachael feels all the more keenly as time passes. With a new generation growing up protected by the tight restrictions, yet unaware of quite how hard the Dunblane families had to fight for them, she wants to ensure lessons are never forgotten.

“I’m part of a generation that has always been guarded by these strict laws which have banned handguns, but I think those laws can be taken for granted,” she reasoned. “With so much in the world to care about, I understand that people have their priorities, but this one is mine, because I lost my brother to gun violence.

“You can’t ever be sure that things won’t change, and change drastically. We’re at that 30 year mark now, and we’re living in a different world in many ways. That’s why it’s so important to remind people why these laws were fought for.”

That anniversary, like all the others that preceded it, is a private time to reflect on such laws, and above all, to remember Gwen Mayor and the innocent souls in her class for whom change came too late. All these years later, they are still loved deeply, both by those left to pick up the pieces, and those who have come to adore them through the precious memories of others.

It is a tragedy that Rachael never got to meet that wee boy with the twinkle in his eye and a zest for life. Maybe now, she wonders, he would have been married with children of his own. Perhaps his adventurous spirit would have led him to travel far and wide, or his love of trains might have blossomed into an engineering career. They are among the countless questions that cannot be answered. Yet one thing is beyond doubt - Ross Irvine would be proud of his wee sister.