1991 armed members of Sendero Luminoso entered Huasahuasi, threatening residents and entering multiple homes. Four men were taken from their homes to the town's central plaza. Guerrilla band members also went to the convent, where McCormack was alone whilst Stevenson received medical treatment in Lima. Sendero Luminoso members did not enter the convent, ordering McCormack to come out, which eventually she did. She was marched to the plaza and made to sit on the benches alongside the four men. For about an hour the five victims were harangued, interrogated and shouted at. Several local people interceded for the victims' lives, calling them good people and not wrongdoers. Sendero Luminoso retorted that they had not come for a "dialogue", but to "carry out a sentence". McCormack was accused of dispensing "American food" (Caritas provisions) and spreading "American ideas" (by providing school books). Local people vouched for her, arguing that she was Australian, not American, but this did not deter the guerrillas. At night, young villagers surrounded McCormack in darkness, managing to move her back into the crowd. The guerrillas noticed her absence, returning her to the bench. Eventually the five prisoners were ordered to lie face down on the terrazzo-tiled plaza. Each was shot once in the back of the head. McCormack was killed first, shot by a young woman guerrilla, about six metres (about 20 feet) from the church door. The bodies could not be moved from the plaza without authoritarian permission the next morning, so parishioners kept vigil by McCormack's body, burning candles and praying. Women laid her out in the sacristy, doing for her what was done for the men killed with her. On 23 May 1991 a funeral Mass was held before her burial in a Huasahuasi cemetery niche donated by a parishioner. Possible sainthood In October 2010, Australian media reported McCormack's possible recognised sainthood after Mary MacKillop's canonisation. The Daily Telegraph reported that senior Peruvian and Australian Catholic clergy expected preparing a submission to the Vatican for McCormack's cause after Mary MacKillop's canonisation. Congregational Leader of the Sisters of St Joseph, Sister Ann Derwin, said that people in Huasahuasi, already regarding McCormack as a saint, demanded this. It also reported that people judged to have been martyrs do not require evidence of miracles performed through their intercession, hoping that this would accelerate McCormack cause. Legacy The Irene McCormack Catholic College in Butler, Western Australia, was named