A man was on a life-support machine in Altnagelvin Hospital, Derry, last night after he was shot as he walked to work in the Waterside at 7.30 a.m. yesterday, writes George Jackson.
Detectives investigating the attempted murder of Mr Darren Thompson (22), said they believed it was connected to an ongoing dispute between loyalist paramilitaries. They also believed Mr Thompson might have known his attacker.
Mr Thompson, a labourer, was shot from close range in the left eye as he walked along Woodburn Park, about 500 yards from where he lives with his parents at Harkness Gardens. An hour earlier, police had arrested four men several hundred yards from the scene. The operation was linked to the loyalist feud.
The attempted murder was the latest in a series of violent incidents which involved the UVF and the UDA in the Tullyally area of the Waterside. Last month there were clashes between rival paramilitary groups in a local housing estate, but the violence escalated when a man was injured in a gun attack on the Cosy Inn bar, Tullyally, almost two weeks ago.
That incident was followed by a pipe-bomb attack on a family, also in Tullyally, in which a mother, with her nine-month-old baby in the back seat, unwittingly drove her car with the pipe-bomb attached to it. Last Tuesday night, the UDA issued a list of five men whom it warned to leave Derry. Mr Thompson's name was not on the list.
Assets of criminal gang frozen
The Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) has frozen an estimated £300,000 in assets believed to be owned by an organised crime gang, writes Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor.
The ARA, the Northern equivalent of the Criminal Assets Bureau, was yesterday granted interim orders by the High Court allowing it to freeze the assets, consisting mainly of properties in Antrim and Down. The court heard the assets were the proceeds of criminal activity, "including the robbery and distraction burglary of elderly people living in isolated homes in country areas across Northern Ireland".
The agency, under the former Assistant Chief Constable, Mr Alan McQuillan, searched premises in Lisburn, Co Antrim, and Dromore and Carryduff, Co Down and documents and other evidence were seized. The interim orders refer to a house in Lisburn; two in Carryduff, Co Down; another house in the Ormeau Road area of south Belfast; an apartment in Newcastle, Co Down; and another house in Dromore, Co Down.