'I'll always remember Natalie's dark, witty humour'

A friend of murder victim Natalie McNally has said the thing she will remember most about her is her "dark, witty sense of humour".

On Monday, Stephen McCullagh was found guilty of murdering Natalie in her Lurgan home in December 2022.

McCullagh, 36, of Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, had denied murdering his pregnant partner, but it took a jury just over two hours of deliberation to deliver a guilty verdict.

Sarah Creighton also said Natalie was "extraordinarily kind" and "very much a woman of conviction".

Speaking to BBC NI's Good Morning Ulster programme Creighton said: "She was so funny, it was the one thing I always remember about her was that she was so whip-smart and funny.

"She had a really kind of dark, witty sense of humour and it just came out all the time.

"She was very passionate, she would have stood up very strongly for what she believed in.

"She cared very deeply about her family, she loved animals - she just absolutely adored animals - and she cared very passionately about social justice."

Creighton, a lawyer and commentator, said she first met Natalie on Twitter and the two later joined a group who talked on social media and met up with each other for several years.

She was holding her four-week old baby son when she heard that Natalie had been murdered.

"It was like a gut punch and all of us that had been in that group together were just in absolute shock that this had happened.

"I had heard the day before that somebody had been murdered in Lurgan, but it never occurred to me that it could be Natalie, so that was deeply, deeply upsetting.

"It was horrendous really and she should be here and her son should be here."

On hearing that McCullagh had been found guilty on Monday, she said she was "relieved and pleased for her [Natalie's] family, glad they've got justice".

"They have been through absolute hell and they've waited a long time for this," she added.

Thirty women have been violently killed in Northern Ireland since 2020.

Creighton said the task of trying to tackle the issue is "absolutely mammoth".

"I don't know how you can begin to address it really, sometimes it feels quite overwhelming," she said.

"But it is quite clearly obvious that Northern Ireland has a problem, a serious problem."