Parents in bedside vigil for boy shot in head

THE agony continued yesterday for the parents of a five-year-old boy shot in the head in a primary school playground in the North.

Darragh Summers remained in a critical condition in hospital, with his mother and father, Gerald and Janine, at his bedside.

A spokeswoman for the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children said there had been no change in his condition.

“He is still critical, there is no more we can say,” said the spokeswoman.

The boy was hit in the head on Friday by what police believe may have been a stray bullet from a hunter’s gun in the packed playground of St Patrick’s Primary School at Mullinaskea, a small village three miles from Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.

He is in his first year at the Catholic school and lives on a housing estate in Drumbeg, just outside Enniskillen with his parents.

Police have appealed for any hunters out shooting on Friday to contact them.

They have also issued an appeal for information about two vehicles seen near Darragh’s school.

They want to speak to the occupants of a people carrier, or anyone who saw it, near the school at around the time of the incident.

They also want to talk to the occupants of a silver Ford Mondeo seen in the area at lunchtime on Wednesday, a police spokesman said.

Officers yesterday continued carrying out door-to-door inquiries at houses around the school and are preparing to speak to many of the 180 children who were in the playground at the time of the shooting.

Detectives have yet to establish what kind of weapon was responsible for Darragh’s injuries and Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Kyle, who is in charge of the inquiry, said his team wanted to speak to anyone who may have heard shooting near the school on Friday.

He said police were keen to “build up a picture of any shooting that may have taken place in the area over the past few weeks”.

Det Insp Kyle said police had now veered towards the feeling the shooting was an accident. “We wouldn’t like to think there’s anyone out there who is deliberately targeting five-year-old boys,” he said.