Three men have been acquitted of murder in the killing of Belfast journalist Lyra McKee

LONDON -- Three men were acquitted of murder Friday in the killing of Belfast journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot by a member of a dissident Irish Republican Army splinter group while covering a 2019 riot in Northern Ireland.

Justice Patricia Smyth issued not guilty verdicts after a nonjury trial in Belfast Crown Court that was held intermittently over the past two years.

McKee, 29, was shot while standing near law enforcement officers observing an anti-police riot in Londonderry, also known as Derry, on April 18, 2019. Protesters had tossed fire bombs at police and torched a car before four shots rang out and a bullet fired by a masked gunman struck McKee.

The New IRA, a small paramilitary group that opposes Northern Ireland’s peace process, said its members accidentally shot the reporter while aiming at police.

McKee wrote about the challenges faced by the generation of “cease-fire babies” raised after the 1998 Good Friday peace accord ended three decades of sectarian violence. She was becoming an influential voice chronicling the legacy of the years of paramilitary violence carried out by Irish nationalists and supporters of remaining part of the U.K.

The prime ministers of Britain and Ireland and political leaders from Northern Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic communities were among the hundreds who attended her funeral and her death helped feuding politicians revive Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, which had collapsed in 2017.

No one was ever charged with pulling the trigger in her killing but three other men, Paul McIntyre, 58, Peter Cavanagh, 37, and Jordan Gareth Devine, 25, were charged with murder as accomplices for encouraging or assisting the shooter.

Defense lawyers said the circumstantial evidence in the case was not sufficient to convict the men.

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