Porter 'beaten to death in burglary gone wrong'

A hospital porter may have been battered to death when a burglary at his home turned violent, it emerged today.

PSNI murder squad detectives are believed to be examining a possible break-in theory after finding the body of 40-year-old David Hamilton in Dundonald, east Belfast.

Mr Hamilton, a diabetic who lived alone, regularly invited friends round to his flat on the loyalist Ballybeen estate, neighbours said.

Police are also checking to see if a row could have flared during one of these gatherings.

It is believed the dead man had been badly assaulted and may have been beaten about the head.

A television set was also taken from his home after the discovery was made yesterday.

As forensic teams combed the area for clues, residents on the estate were stunned by the killing of a man described as friendly but quiet.

It was only when he failed to turn up for his shift at the nearby Ulster Hospital that the alarm was raised.

“His brother reported him missing because he hadn’t gone in for work and he was concerned about his diabetes,” the Ulster Unionist councillor for the area, David Drysdale, said.

Mr Drysdale said there was no suggestion of any loyalist paramilitary involvement in the murder at this stage.

“Police are considering a number of lines of inquiry, including one that this was a burglary gone wrong,” he said.

“It’s a horrible way to end your life. He was an ordinary man just minding his own business.”