Football mob beats Catholic to death in random attack

Protestant supporters of a Scottish football team beat to death a Catholic man in an outbreak of sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

Witnesses said more than 20 Protestant supporters of Rangers, many of them wearing team coloured jerseys and scarves, drove into a Catholic district of the town of Coleraine after Rangers clinched the Scottish Premier League championship on Monday NZT.

Billy Leonard, a former policeman and politician from the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, said several carloads of anti-Catholic extremists came armed with clubs “and literally attacked the first person they came across”.

Kevin McDaid, 49, was fatally bludgeoned and his wife, Evelyn, and a 46-year-old Catholic neighbour, Damien Fleming, were injured.

Fleming was reported in critical condition.

A Presbyterian minister in the town, the Rev Alan Johnson, said Rangers supporters were drinking heavily while watching the Rangers victory at pubs in central Coleraine and then drove across a bridge to the Catholic area, Somerset Drive.

A Catholic politician in the town, John Dallat, accused an outlawed Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association, of responsibility.

Rangers enjoys support exclusively from the Protestant side of the community in Northern Ireland and archrival Celtic draws support only from the Catholics.

Those allegiances fuel street fighting in both Glasgow and across Northern Ireland, particularly when the two teams play each other or when the annual league championship – typically won by one of the two – is determined. Celtic, league champions the previous three years, finished second this year.

Near the spot where McDaid died someone had tied a green-and-white Celtic scarf to a pole, and teenagers wearing Celtic clothing huddled on corners drinking beer and shouting anti-Protestant slogans.

The officer leading the murder investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Frankie Taylor, appealed to the Catholic minority in the town not to retaliate.

Taylor said the dead man had four children, did volunteer youth work in the town, and had been encouraging local Catholics to co-operate with Northern Ireland’s traditionally Protestant police.

Many Belfast pubs refuse to admit customers if they are wearing football jerseys or scarves because of the likelihood it will spark a fight.

Football mob beats Catholic to death in random attack

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