UDA shoot down teenager
BY LAURA FRIEL
Gavin Brett, an 18-year-old Protestant living in the mixed Glengormley estate, was singing and joking with a group of Catholic friends just moments before loyalist gunmen launched their deadly attack last Sunday night.
It was shortly before 11pm and the teenagers had just left St. Enda's Gaelic football club, where they had been celebrating Michael Farrell's 18th birthday. A car approached and stopped before a number of automatic shots were fired, fatally wounding Gavin and seriously injuring Michael.
Michael Brett, a paramedic living locally, rushed to the scene to discover the victims were his son and his son's best friend. All attempts to revive Gavin failed and he died cradled in his father's arms. His teenage companion was rushed to hospital.
Michael Farrell, a promising young footballer, had been shot in the ankle, the bullet shattering the bone. In hospital, Michael wept for the death of his young friend and the trauma visited upon the party of birthday celebrants.
Local priest Fr. Dan White visited Michael in hospital and described the teenager as inconsolable at his best friend's death. He asked his own mother to go and say to Gavin's mother that he was sorry as if he was in some way responsible, said the priest.
In a statement to a Belfast newsroom, a caller claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Red Hand Defenders. The grouping, a cover name used by both the UDA and LVF, warned that their ``campaign will increase in ferocity in the coming weeks, months and days'' and cited the excuse ``because of the existing denial of civil rights for Protestants.''
Earlier in the month, the RHD admitted killing 19-year-old Catholic Ciaran Cummings in a similar drive-by shooting. Days later, loyalist gunmen opened fire on a Catholic community centre in North Belfast where a summer play scheme for local children was being held.
In a statement claiming responsibility, the RHD threatened more attacks and warned that they considered ``all nationalist people as hostile and legitimate targets.''
The so-called Red Hand Defenders first emerged in 1998 as a loyalist group determined to wreck the peace process but loyalist sources later admitted that the RHD never really existed. It emerged simply as a flag of convenience used by dissent groups like the Orange Volunteer and loyalist groupings officially on ceasefire, the UDA and LVF.
In March 1999, the car bomb attack that killed Lurgan defence lawyer Rosemary Nelson was claimed by the RDH but other loyalist groups have always been suspected of involvement in the attack.
In September 1998, the name was used to claim the death of RUC officer Frankie O'Reilly, who died when a blast bomb was thrown during an Orange Drumcree protest. It was also used in connection with the sectarian killing of Brian Service in North Belfast in October 1998.
More recently, the name has been used by the UDA to claim hundreds of pipe and blast bomb attacks on Catholic families across the North.
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