Suspected car thieves attack resident

A father of four suffered severe back and leg injuries after he was attacked by three thugs at his Lagmore Meadows home in Belfast on Friday night 19 November.

The thugs slashed the man with a knife and beat him with planks of woods after he confronted them in his back garden.

The man was taken to hospital, where staff discovered he had been slashed with a knife on his neck and legs and was bruised on his back where the youths had hit him with planks of wood.

"I think my belt saved me because they slashed it with a knife. I still have the belt with the blade sticking out of it," he said.

"Since it happened I have been thinking about Kieran Milnes. I could be in jail just like him because I reacted exactly the same way. I saw them attacking my property and van".

Sinn Féin Assembly member Michael Ferguson said he was thankful that the man escaped with his life. "This man, like Kieran Milnes, caught these thugs trying to attack his property," he said, calling for the British legal system to review the law.

"The Attorney General, in conjunction with the DPP Alister Frazier, needs to review the law in order so that people can defend their families, homes and property against the same type of people who attacked this man and put Kieran Milnes in prison."