A man is seriously ill after being shot in the head with what police believe was an air rifle in Bangor, Co Down, on Saturday.
The victim, who is in his 40s, was shot in the back of the head as he sat in a van with three colleagues at a demolition site in Shaftsbury Road. He was taken to the Ulster Hospital at Dundonald and later transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
A police spokesman said they were satisfied there was no paramilitary or sectarian motive behind the incident. Officers recovered a firearm near the scene. It is thought the man may have been hit by a pellet from a high-powered air gun.
In a separate incident early yesterday, a 21-year-old man was seriously injured in south Belfast. He was discovered in Eblana Street, off University Street, with a fractured skull and cuts to the back of his head. Police said a female wearing a bloodstained white top was seen in the area at the time of the incident and urged her to come forward.
Meanwhile, a bus driver in north Belfast was threatened with a hatchet during a robbery on Saturday night. Two youths boarded his vehicle on the North Circular Road, threatened the driver and ran off with a sum of money.
Mr Ciaran Rogan, a spokesman for the North's public transport company, Translink, said his firm was not prepared to continue putting drivers' lives at risk.
"Behaviour of this sort is completely unacceptable. We cannot continue putting our drivers in situations like this," he added.
There has been a spate of violent attacks on bus drivers in Belfast in recent months. Last month, a driver was badly injured after being beaten about the head with a pistol during a similar incident.