Sectarian attacker gets 16 years for attempted murder
A sectarian thug who wanted to kill and cut up his battered Catholic victim was jailed for 16 years today.
Neil White, 30, was part of a gang who strangled and repeatedly stabbed Michael Reid during a merciless attack in Ballymena, Co Antrim.
At one stage the 31-year-old went limp and pretended to be dead in a bid to survive the relentless assault.
The victim, who has since gone into hiding, was visiting a friend in Ballymena’s staunchly Protestant Harryville district when White and two other men came to the house two years ago.
Mr Reid, an imposing 6ft 4ins tall, was beaten with a blunt object, stabbed and throttled with cable after they discovered his religion.
Sentencing White at Belfast Crown Court today, Mr Justice Coghlin told him: “Ultimately the victim went to ground and pretended he was dead.
“You were assigned to guard the victim while others left the premises with the chilling words: ’We are going to have to get a saw to cut him up, look at the size of him’.”
White, of Wakehurst Road, Ballymena, pleaded guilty last week to charges of attempted murder.
Two other men have gone on the run since his arrest.
All three had launched into Mr Reid after discovering he was a Catholic because of where he lived in the town.
While the other two went to get another gruesome weapon the victim made a dash for the door but was caught and stabbed again by White.
After a struggle he managed to escape, running about 150 yards before collapsing on the road where a police patrol found him.
Doctors said he was lucky to be alive because he had lost so much blood. Miraculously the knife had missed his vital organs.
Since the attack on October 11 2003 Mr Reid has quit the town, which has been gripped by sectarian tensions, and claimed it was unsafe for Catholics to walk the streets in certain areas.
White showed no emotion in the dock as the judge passed sentence.
Mr Justice Coghlin, who took into account a number of mitigating factors, said the starting point for attempted murder with a sectarian motive would normally be in excess of 20 years.
But the judge recognised his guilty plea, along with his heavy drinking on the night of the attack and the fact that a close relative with a greater intellect had influenced his actions.
Mr Justice Coghlin, who said he was appalled that Mr Reid was still waiting to see a psychiatrist two years after the knifing from which he had physically recovered, also delivered a withering assessment on the levels of sectarianism in the North.
He said: “Mr Reid was a Catholic in Harryville, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Stressing that a Protestant could have met a similar fate in other areas, he added: “Sectarianism is a corrosive toxin that remorselessly eats away at the social fabric surrounding many communities in Northern Ireland.
He said it was manifest by the grotesque activities of those orchestrating so-called recreational rioting by children.
“Over time sectarianism has been cynically exploited by politicians and paramilitaries.
“No child is born sectarian but rather acquires such attitudes and beliefs as a result of social contact and influence including family, peer groups and the wider community.”
Praising the efforts of those whose struggle against the menace, Mr Justice Coghlin said: “Such people are entitled to expect the support and protection from organisations of the state, including the courts. To let them down is simply not an option, there can be no compromise with sectarianism.”