NORTHERN IRELAND Screen, which promotes the film industry in the region, has condemned a sectarian attack on a young Catholic working as an extra in the loyalist Village area of south Belfast.
James Turley (18) said he was left for dead after being chased through the streets of the Village, assaulted and dumped in a wheelie bin on Friday.
The trainee chef from the nationalist Short Strand area of east Belfast was working as an extra on the film The Good Man,which stars The Wire'sAidan Gillen, when he was attacked.
He was one of a number of young Catholics and Protestants working on the film. Some loyalists targeted and attacked the Catholics as they tried to leave the area.
Mr Turley told the Irish Newshow he ran from his attackers. He hid in a local house and heard one of the gang shouting, "There's a Taig in there."
“They all just came in and started beating me,” he added. “They put me in a bin and were pushing me somewhere. I didn’t know where I was going. When I got put in the bin I thought that was it.
“I think they realised they couldn’t beat me when I was in the bin. They kicked or pushed it over and dragged me out of it,” says Mr Turley, whose father Frank was murdered in 1998. He said at one stage he was knocked out but, “I started to come around and then I heard them saying, ‘that’s enough. I think he’s dead’.”
He managed to flag down a passing motorist and was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital.
The attack was resonant of the murder in 1994, in the same area, of 31-year-old Margaret Wright who was beaten, shot dead and dumped in a wheelie bin. Her attackers mistakenly thought she was a Catholic.
Nationalist and unionist politicians condemned the attack on Mr Turley as did Rick Hill and Richard Williams, the chairman and chief executive respectively of Northern Ireland Screen.
“Our thoughts are with James Turley and his family, as well as with the other cast and crew involved,” they said in a joint statement.
“We understand this was an unprovoked attack on a group of young men who were part of the growing positive story of Northern Ireland’s burgeoning creative industries.
This has been a regrettable event and not one which is typical of the industry here, where increased film and television production activity has been completed without incident.”
