A man who wanted to kill and cut up his battered Catholic victim was jailed for 16 years yesterday. Neil White (30) was part of a gang which strangled and stabbed Michael Reid during an attack in Ballymena, Co Antrim.
At one stage Mr Reid (31) pretended to be dead in an attempt to survive the relentless assault on October 11th, 2003.
The victim, who has since gone into hiding, was visiting a friend in Ballymena's Harryville district when White and two other men came to the house. Mr Reid, an imposing 6ft 4in tall, was beaten with a blunt object, stabbed and throttled with cable after they discovered his religion.
Sentencing White at Belfast Crown Court, Mr Justice Coghlin told him: "You were assigned to guard the victim while others left the premises with the chilling words: 'We are going to have to get a saw to cut him up. Look at the size of him'."
White, of Wakehurst Road, Ballymena, pleaded guilty last week to charges of attempted murder.
Two other men have gone on the run since his arrest. All three had attacked Mr Reid after discovering he was a Catholic because of where he lived. While the other two went to get another weapon, the victim made a dash for the door but was caught and stabbed again by White.
After a struggle he managed to escape, running about 150 yards before collapsing on the road where a police patrol found him.
Doctors said he was lucky to be alive because he had lost so much blood. Miraculously the knife had missed his vital organs.
Since the attack Mr Reid has left the town and claimed it was unsafe for Catholics to walk the streets in certain areas.
White showed no emotion in the dock as judgment was passed.
But the judge recognised his guilty plea, along with his heavy drinking on the night of the attack and the fact that a close relative with a greater intellect had influenced his actions.
Mr Justice Coghlin, who said he was appalled that Mr Reid was still waiting to see a psychiatrist two years after the knifing from which he had physically recovered, also delivered a withering indictment of Northern sectarianism. "Mr Reid was a Catholic in Harryville, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. There can be no compromise with sectarianism," he said.
- (PA)