Cemetery shooting victim abducted

A MAN critically injured in a graveyard shooting in the North was abducted, police said yesterday.

The 26-year-old was found by officers in the cemetery in Holywood, Co Down, with a gunshot wound to the chest at 2.30am after a single shot and the victim’s yells for help were heard by a nearby resident.

Detective Superintendent Graham Shield, the man leading the investigation, said paramilitary involvement was one of the possibilities being investigated.

He said the injured man had told police he had been abducted from a nearby petrol station before being shot in the Redburn Cemetery.

“We were able to speak to him and he was able to tell us that he had been abducted by three or four men from the area of Redburn filling station on the Old Holywood Road,” he said.

After undergoing emergency surgery, the man remained in a critical condition in hospital. Police were treating the shooting as a case of attempted murder, and detectives mounted door-to-door inquiries at homes around the cemetery and filling station.

North Down Ulster Unionist councillor Diana Peacocke said the town of Holywood was shocked by the shooting.

“It is tragic that a few members of our society are intent on destroying human life,” she said.

“This close-knit town will be feeling disbelief and frustration upon hearing such news. Schoolchildren, too, have been disrupted as the local primary school close to the scene had to remain closed today.”

Meanwhile, a post-mortem examination was being carried out on a man who died after being found with extensive burns in a wood near Bangor.

The 43-year-old died in hospital several hours after being discovered in a wooded area of Bangor, near Balloo Drive. He was named as Robert Heaney, who lived at Kilclief Gardens.

Police are treating his death as suspicious but have not mounted a murder investigation yet.