Bomb attack policeman regains consciousness

A Catholic policeman who survived a dissident republican bomb attack has regained consciousness and is showing signs of improvement, the PSNI confirmed today.

Constable Peadar Heffron, 33, had his right leg amputated at the Royal Hospital in Belfast earlier this month.

He had just left his home outside Randalstown, Co Antrim, to start work in west Belfast when the device exploded under his blue Alfa Romeo car on January 8.

A police spokeswoman said: “Constable Peadar Heffron is still described as critical but stable, however he has regained consciousness and is showing signs of improvement.”

As captain of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s gaelic football team and a fluent Irish speaker, Pc Heffron represents the changing face of a service which is steadily redressing a traditional religious imbalance in policing north of the border.

Last year Pc Heffron, who has served with the police for nine years, was among officers who attended the first meeting at which discussions in Londonderry between Policing Board officials and members of the public were conducted in the Irish language.

He once played for Kickhams Creggan, a GAA club based in Randalstown.

Shocked neighbours rushed to help Pc Heffron, whose car careered sideways on the slippery Milltown Road at around 6.30am, half a mile from where he lived.

He was taken to hospital for emergency treatment before being transferred to the Royal Victoria in Belfast, where he remains in a critical condition.

Up to a dozen police cars escorted the ambulance as it drove along the M2 motorway into the city.

The explosion happened two miles from the Massereene Army barracks, where two soldiers just about to leave for Afghanistan were shot dead by the Real IRA last March.

Sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, were gunned down as they collected a pizza delivery outside the gates of the base.

Democratic Unionist leader Peter Robinson, Sinn Féin deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Taoiseach Brian Cowen, as well as other politicians and church leaders on all sides, have condemned the bombing.

It is the latest in a series of attacks by dissidents and was virtually identical to one close to the PSNI headquarters, in which an officer’s girlfriend narrowly escaped death last October.