Morning View: A decade on from the killing of a good family man

The murder of David Black a decade ago was brutal and calculating and cowardly.

Mr Black was attacked by surprise as he was travelling on the M1 to work as a prison officer.

It was highly planned in that his movements had obviously been carefully monitored.

And some devious person or persons somewhere probably helped to provide some of the information that led to man's life being extinguished.

We report today on the devastation that such an attack leaves in its wake.

"David was a good man, he was a wonderful husband and father," recalls his widow Yvonne.

The murder was one of a spate of dissident republican terrorist attacks, beginning with the killings of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar at Masserreene barracks in 2009.

Then the murders of Constables Stephen Caroll in 2009 and Ronan Kerr in 2011.

In 2016 another prison officer, Adrian Ismay, was murdered by republican terrorists, with a lie about alleged mistreatment of dissidents in jail (a lie because they are treated even more gently by the criminal justice system than were their Provisional IRA predecessor).

The killer of Ismay, a disturbed and despicable man called Christopher Robinson who came to know, befriend and then betray his target as a St John's Ambulance volunteer, was at one point after his detention but prior to his conviction released on bail - a disgraceful reflection on NI's lenient and shambolic bail system.

The good news, though, is that support for such killers is minimal, and attacks have never gained the momentum that the sectarian haters would want them to gain.

Meanwhile Mr Black's son, Kyle, has made a great success of himself as a thoughtful young DUP councillor.