Another vigil was held in Belfast on Wednesday night for yet more local victims of dissident republicans.
Delivery man Dan Murray was killed on Monday night after being lured to his death by suspected dissidents who placed a bogus order by telephone for Chinese curries and chicken with his partner Ciara Austin.
The couple worked together in a Chinese takeaway on the Falls Road. Ms Austin said Mr Murray had some misgivings about taking the order, which was made from a public phone box in north Belfast, but in the end thought it was safe.
There were two other shootings on Monday. A 17-year-old male was shot several times in the leg at Carlisle Square in north Belfast, while a 25-year-old man was shot a number of times in an alleyway between Sheridan Street and Donore Court off the Antrim Road.
Police are investigating whether one or both these are criminal gang “personal grudge” shootings or so-called punishment attacks.
Fr Gary Donegan of the Holy Cross Church in Ardoyne said on Wednesday he is aware of 25 people who are facing paramilitary-style attacks or expulsions in north Belfast.
He also said a youth worker told him there were up to 10 people, one of them as young as 14, under the same threat in the west of the city.
‘Micro-groups’
He said these “micro-groups” had no right to act as “judge, jury and executioner” in local communities.
“We can’t have the law of the jungle in our society.”
The Workers’ Party organised a protest vigil against the shootings on the Grosvenor Road in west Belfast on Wednesday night. It followed the vigil held late last month for Michael McGibbon in north Belfast who died following a “punishment” shooting that went wrong.
At that vigil his widow, Joanna McGibbon, said if the local community stayed strong, they “could stop these people”.
Ms Austin complained no one was standing up to the killers.
“Everybody knows who is doing it, the dogs in the street know who is behind it and nobody is standing up to them,” she said in a BBC interview. Mr Murray was known to the police and believed to be involved in drug dealing, although his partner said he was not a dealer and had never been convicted of any drug crime.
Targeted
He was targeted a number of times in recent years by groups such as the Continuity IRA and Action Against Drugs.
In March last year, he survived an apparent murder attempt when he was shot in the face, while seven years ago he was shot in the legs in an attack blamed on the Continuity IRA. Ms Austin said the Continuity IRA was trying to extract money from him.
This latest murder and shootings were condemned by Northern politicians with Sinn Féin North Belfast MLA Gerry Kelly saying the “people of north Belfast will not let these armed gangs drag us back to the past”.
After the murder of Mr McGibbon last month, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams denied dissidents had a “toehold” in the communities.
Nobody has been arrested in connection with Mr Murray’s murder or the two other shootings on Monday.
