Man badly injured after being deliberately run over by car

A MAN suffered head injuries yesterday after a car drove over him twice during a vicious assault in west Belfast. Sam Hodgkinson, 53, was walking his dog in the loyalist Shankill Road area when two men got out of a white saloon with a taxi sign on the roof and attacked him.

“They then got back into the vehicle and drove over the man as he lay on the ground, then reversed over him ” a police spokeswoman said.

The man was taken to hospital following the assault close to Westkirk Church around 2.45am. He sustained two broken ribs, leg injuries requiring stitches and heavy bruising around his head and body. It was not thought his injuries were life-threatening.