William Joseph Quinn, known as Liam Quinn, (born 1949, San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

) is a former volunteer

Volunteer (Irish republican)

Volunteer, often abbreviated Vol., is a term used by a number of Irish republican paramilitary organisations to describe their members. Among these have been the various forms of the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army...

 in the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...

 who shot dead PC Stephen Tibble in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on 26 February 1975.

Tibble, who was off duty at the time, saw Quinn fleeing from the police after he been noticed acting suspiciously near a house in which Quinn and fellow members of the Balcombe Street gang

Balcombe Street Siege

The Balcombe Street Siege was an incident involving members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Metropolitan Police Service of London, England lasting from 6 December to 12 December 1975. The siege ended with the surrender of the four IRA volunteers and the release of their two hostages...

 were later found to have been preparing bombs

Improvised explosive device

An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...

. Tibble chased Quinn on his motorbike and, while attempting to stop him, was fatally shot twice in the chest.

Extradition

Quinn escaped to Dublin in the aftermath of the shooting and served a short prison sentence after his arrest for assaulting a police officer there. After his release in 1978 he returned to San Francisco but was arrested in 1981 and later extradited to England in February 1988 where he was convicted of murder

Murder in English law

Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another either intending to cause death or intending to cause serious injury .-Actus reus:The definition of the actus reus Murder is an offence under the...

 and jailed for life with a recommended minimum tariff of thirty-five years.

Quinn served eleven years before he was released in April 1999, when, aged 51, along with the rest of the Balcombe Street gang, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement

Belfast Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement , sometimes called the Stormont Agreement, was a major political development in the Northern Ireland peace process...

. While with the IRA, Quinn adopted an Irish accent and was tagged with the nickname “Yankee Joe” because of his American origins.