Four held as teen left fighting for life after attack

FOUR men were being questioned last night about a sectarian beating in the North which left a teenager fighting for his life.

Michael McIlveen, 15, was attacked in a car park in Ballymena, Co Antrim, as he walked home. He was beaten with baseball bats by a gang of at least a dozen thugs, his family believe.

Detectives who arrested two men following the assault in the town’s Garfield Street on Sunday morning yesterday confirmed another two suspects had been taken for questioning.

Police have also disclosed that a sectarian motive was a definite line of inquiry in the probe into the attack on the young Catholic.

It is believed he was walking home with friends between midnight and 1am when they were targeted. The group scattered but Michael was cornered.

He was taken to hospital where his family have maintained a bedside vigil.

One of his relatives said the attack happened because he is a Catholic.

“He is a wee innocent child lying there,” she said.

“His body, full of life, is now hooked up to machines keeping him alive.”

Ballymena’s police chief said the victim had been chased after a row flared at a cinema in the town.

As detectives studied CCTV footage in a bid to identify the gang members, Superintendent Terry Shevlin urged community leaders to help ease tensions between Protestant and Catholic factions caught up in a worsening dispute.

“We’re quite clear that the motive for this assault was of a sectarian nature. I’m making a clear appeal to civic leaders, community leaders and others with influence in the Ballymena area to not only condemn this, which every right thinking person would do, but to exercise whatever influence they can to prevent any retaliatory attacks that would have another family in the position this family is currently undergoing.”

He refused to disclose the ages of those being questioned, but said: “They are in the youth bracket.”

Britain’s Northern Secretary, Peter Hain, said: “These attacks, although they are mercifully infrequent compared to the past, must stop. This is an awful sectarianism which harks back to Northern Ireland’s dark and brutal past and we are going to work to hunt down those responsible and make sure this kind of thing does not happen.”