Protestant soccer fans fatally beat Catholic man in Northern Ireland
DUBLIN, Ireland - Militant Protestant supporters of a Scottish soccer team beat to death a Roman Catholic man in the latest sign of how sports rivalries inspire sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
DUBLIN, Ireland - Militant Protestant supporters of a Scottish soccer team beat to death a Roman Catholic man in the latest sign of how sports rivalries inspire sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
Witnesses said yesterday that about 20 Protestant supporters of Glasgow Rangers, many of them wearing the team's blue-and-white jerseys, drove into a Catholic district of the town of Coleraine after Rangers clinched the Scottish Premier League championship Sunday.
Billy Leonard, a former policeman and politician from the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, said 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 neighbor, Damien Fleming, were both injured. Fleming was reported in critical condition.
Police said they arrested seven men on suspicion of involvement in the attack.
A Presbyterian minister in the town, the Rev. Alan Johnston, said Rangers supporters were drinking heavily while watching Sunday's Rangers victory at pubs in central Coleraine and then drove across a bridge to the Catholic area.
A Catholic politician in the town, John Dallat, said the outlawed Protestant paramilitary group Ulster Defence Association was responsible.
Rangers enjoys support from the British Protestant side of the community in Northern Ireland, while archrival Glasgow Celtic draws support from the Irish Catholics.
Those sectarian allegiances fuel street fighting, and occasionally worse, in Glasgow and across Northern Ireland, particularly when the two teams play each other. Celtic, league champions the previous three years, finished second Sunday.
The officer leading the 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 cooperate with Northern Ireland's traditionally Protestant police.