Three held in drug-dealer murder probe

Three men were arrested today by police hunting the killers of a drug dealer hacked to death by a gang in the North last summer.

The men were detained in the seaside town of Bangor where Mark Christie was brutally murdered last August.

The 36-year-old from the Whitehill area of the town was chased through the Kilcooley estate – an area dominated by loyalist paramilitaries – by up to six men.

When they caught him he was attacked with a range of weapons, believed to have included a machete.

A week before his death Christie had been given a suspended jail term on an assault charge.

He had been warned to stay away from the town but was spotted near a friend’s home on August 22 and hunted down.

Several men have been arrested in recent months for questioning about the murder, but all were released without charge.

Earlier today officers from the PSNI Major Investigations Team, supported by uniformed officers from Bangor, arrested the three suspects.