The father of a Protestant teenager killed by loyalists as he talked to his Catholic friends has said he would find it difficult to forgive the killers.
Mr Michael Brett, a paramedic, attempted to resuscitate his son, Gavin, after he was shot twice on Sunday evening in Glengormley. Asked if he had a message for his son's killers, Mr Brett said: "I wonder do they realise the pain and the anguish they have caused myself, my wife, Gavin's brother and sister and relatives and friends?"
Mr Brett said his family greatly appreciated the fact that 200 of Gavin's friends had come to their house with messages of support. He said his son was "a good lad". "I'm very proud of my son. Apart from being his dad, he was my mate, my chum. People asked me earlier, `Did you bond with your son?' I bonded with him the day he was born 18 years ago and we were the best of mates," he said.
"He was a very precocious character, very outgoing. He had friends in both sections of the community. There wasn't a bigoted bone in his body, and basically bigots took his life away."
Mr Brett said paramilitaries had to leave violence behind. "I can't understand it, I can't understand the mentality of these bigots. God forgive them, at present I find it difficult to," he said.
Chief Supt Bertie Verner, the RUC commander in the area, said the police were particularly interested in the movements of a dark blue Vauxhall Nova saloon, with the registration number HDZ 6603. A car fitting this description was used in the attack and was later found burnt out on the loyalist New Mossley estate.
Hundreds of people from both sides of the religious divide gathered for a candlelit vigil at the spot where Gavin Brett was murdered.
Thanking the crowd for taking part, Mr Michael Brett said this was the beginning of their healing process. Local parish priest Father Dan White said of the killers: "The gunmen have nothing to offer to anybody. They are all losers, much more so than we apparently are."