ABOUT 2,000 mourners attended the funeral of Mr Robert Hamill in Portadown, Co Armagh, yesterday. Mr Hamill died last week after being beaten by a gang in the town centre 12 days earlier.
At the funeral in St John the Baptist Church, Drumcree, Portadown, the parish priest, Father Sean Larkin, asked: "How can such brutality, such hatred, take root in human hearts as to drive people to callously and deliberately take on four innocent young citizens walking home from a social evening and cruelly attack them, kicking one so viciously that he died from his injuries?" He said Mr Hamill's death "highlights the sectarian evil" in society.
He passed his condolences to the family of the RUC man Mr Darren Bradshaw, who was shot dead in a Belfast bar on Friday.