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Police forensic experts examine the area around a BMW car in Newtownards, Co Down, Northern Ireland, after a was man killed in a drive-by shooting that may have been the victim of a drugs-related feud. The victim, a prominent loyalist, was gunned down after a motorcycle pulled up alongside his parked car in Newtownards, Co Down, just before midday.
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The senior loyalist who was shot dead in Newtownards earlier today has been named as Stephen Warnock. The victim, who was in his mid 30s, was a senior member of the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It is thought he may have been the victim of a drugs-related feud.
Warnock was gunned down after a motorcycle pulled up alongside his parked car in Newtownards, Co Down, just before midday.
It is understood he had switched allegiances from the LVF's rivals in the Ulster Volunteer Force. Security sources said detectives were examining the dead man's links to the narcotics trade as a likely motive.
One said: "We're looking at a fight among loyalist paramilitaries over drugs."
As forensic experts moved in, police launched a hunt for the gunmen, seen speeding away from scene on the Circular Road, yards away from Regent House Grammar School.
The police commander for Newtownards said the victim may have had a conversation with the killers before being shot.
Chief Superintendent Judith Gillespie added: "The child is obviously deeply traumatised. "It's an absolutely despicable act to shoot a man in cold blood in front of his three-year-old daughter."
Police sources described it as a well-planned assassination.
"It has all the hallmarks of a professional job," said one. "They fired from a motorbike at point blank range and then made a quick getaway."
The Democratic Unionist MP for the area, Iris Robinson, described the murder as an horrific attack.
She added: "We should also be thankful that the burst of gunfire which killed this man did not kill others especially pupils attending nearby Regents House school."
Tom Hamilton, an Ulster Unionist Assembly member, insisted there could be no justification for the shooting.
"No cause is worth the taking of a life," he said. "It is disturbing that such an attack took place in broad daylight and that the life of a young child was also put at risk."
Deputy First Minister and leader of the nationalist SDLP Mark Durkan said he needed to know little of the circumstances behind the killing in Newtownards to condemn it as another "senseless murder".
"This again shows that there are dark and very sinister elements at work in Northern Ireland, either in the paramilitaries or on the fringes of the paramilitaries," he said.
However, the latest murder did not spell the end of the peace process, he said.
"Clearly a number of things are happening that are giving people real cause for concern about the process," he said.
"We have political uncertainty, created by the tactics within parties and the postures of some party leaders.
"We have uncertainty and confusion because some parties who are very strong about inclusion in the political institutions don't take the places afforded to them by inclusion in terms of policing."
He added: "We have the new beginning to policing under challenge, we have the new beginning to the political institutions under challenge.
"But I think underneath all of that, people know that there are parties working there at the heart of the agreement, and parties like the SDLP are the backbone of this agreement, and we are not going to let the wreckers and the messers bring it down."
Two of Stephen Warnock's brothers were killed in 1972. In September Robert Warnock, 18, was shot dead by an off-duty police man during an attempted robbery at a bar on the outskirts of the city. A month later his 15-year-old brother William was knocked down and killed by an army vehicle in east Belfast.
PA