Victim’s life highlights squalid world of loyalist violence

STEPHEN PAUL, who was shot dead in Belfast on Saturday, was a father at 14.

At 16, he was shot five times by the loyalist paramilitary group, the UDA, in a punishment attack for alleged criminal behaviour and told to leave his home city of Belfast.

In 1998, his uncle, notorious drug dealer, William ‘Wassy’ Paul, was shot dead by an off-shoot of the UVF, the RHC. His nephew promptly got a tattoo on his right arm: “In loving memory of Uncle Wassy murdered by a cowardly bastard.” The killer, Frankie Curry, a loyalist assassin who claimed more than 20 murders, was shot dead in March 1999.