PSNI ignore forensics

BY ÁINE Ní BHRIAIN

On 22 July last year, Jason O'Halloran was standing with a friend on Rosapenna Street in North Belfast around 11.30 pm. The two were engrossed in conversation when four men drove by in a dark Ford Mondeo car. One of them suddenly opened fire with a handgun. As the friends dived for cover, three of the shots hit O'Halloran, striking him once in both legs and once in the groin.

The gunman continued to shoot at O'Halloran's friend, with one bullet passing through the man's trousers, narrowly missing him.

Hours later, another North Belfast resident, 19-year-old Gerard Lawlor, was shot dead by unionist paramilitaries as he walked home after spending an evening with friends. Gerard died less than 200 yards from his home. His killers were able to identify him as a target because Gerard was heading towards the nationalist Whitewell area.

O'Halloran spent eight days in hospital after the attack and said this week that his case has been "left to rot away". He has also revealed the shocking news that the PSNI have never made any forensic examination of the clothing he was wearing the night he was shot.

This comes in direct contrast to a statement by the PSNI detective investigating the case, who says that the police have no forensic evidence and no witnesses. But, says Roy Suitters, the PSNI man heading the investigaton, they have been looking for a motorbike which may have been seen in the area that night and used in the Lawlor killing.

O'Halloran says that although a motorbike had indeed been used that night - in an attempt to kill Oldpark man Ryan Corbett - he still believes that his attackers and those who shot dead Gerard Lawlor are one and the same.

"I can't believe that the police are complaining they have no forensics," said O'Halloran this week. "They left the scene of Ryan Corbett's attack, didn't even take a witnesss statement or anything. Then they drove off down Rosapenna and five minutes later this car came down seeming to know me and my friend were there.

"No one came for a statement from my friend until August. They took no forensics at the scene of Ryan's attack and they didn't even want to see my clothes. Everything about the attack on me makes me think that Gerard Lawlor was shot at from this same car. The police still haven't found it."

O'Halloran says that after the attack the vehicle drove away casually, as if the occupants were not worried about being caught or stopped.

"It was just the way they drove off afterwards, they didn't even go fast," he says. "They were heading in the direction of the Cliftonville Road. It was when I read the interview with the Lawlors in the North Belfast News and they said they didn't know if it was a car or a bike. I think it was that car, because they were ruthless but exact."

O'Halloran was forced to launch a formal complaint with the Police Ombudsman's Office in June of this year after he was harassed by the PSNI during a UVF march at the junction of the Crumlin and Ligoniel Roads. He was flagged down by the PSNI just as the march was passing and detained by two officers, who refused to let him continue to safety.

O'Halloran says the PSNI had been making his life "a living hell" ever since a court case four years ago. As a result of his testimony, two PSNI constables were ejected from the force and had to serve time in prison. O'Halloran received several death threats after the trial, and was told he wouldn't live to see the year through.

On one summer night in Rosapenna Street last July, that threat nearly became a reality.