New Lodge attack was sectarian

Sinn Féin Councillor Carál Ní Chuilin

Sinn Féin says a ball bearing attack on a house in Stratheden Street in the New Lodge area of North Belfast was carried out by loyalists.

The sectarian attack happened just after 10pm on Monday night as the owner of the house was attempting to get his three-year-old son off to sleep. The ball bearing smashed through the front window, narrowly missing the pair.

"A former Sinn Féin councillor, Gerard Brophy who stood down due to ill health, lived here and we think that the attackers believed he still lived in the house and were acting on out of date information supplied by members of the PSNI," said Sinn Féin Councillor Carál Ní Chuilin.

Ní Chuilin also rubbished PSNI and media reports that the attack was linked to incidents in nearby Carrickhill on Monday night, when a fight between two families escalated into a street brawl.

The councillor has also called for people to be vigilant following the attempted abductions of four Catholic schoolboys in two separate incidents in the New Lodge and Cliftonville Road areas of North Belfast on Friday 30 April.

In an incident on the Cliftonville Road, two boys attending St Patrick's College on the Antrim Road were approached by two men who tried to get them into their car. The occupants first asked the boys if they were Catholics but the boys ran off.

It later emerged that a man, driving an old style Ford Fiesta, offered two other boys from St Patrick's a lift to school. They also ran off and reported the incident when they arrived at school.

Later on the Grosvenor Road in West Belfast, a man driving the same car tried to abduct a ten-year-old Catholic boy.