A SDLP councillor in Co Antrim has fired four shots at a gang of men who targeted his home early this morning.
Mr Danny O'Connor confronted the gang after he watched them through security cameras pouring what he called a tar-like substance over his mother's car at around 12.45 a.m.
The car was parked outside their house in Churchill Road in Larne.
The councillor said the gang ran off but returned shortly afterwards. He said one appeared to be about to throw a rock or other missile at him.
"There was one fella who looked to be in the act of throwing something - I don't know if it was a stone or a pipe bomb - but at the time, when you have to react to something like that, everything just seems to happen instantaneously.
"I was really scared because I thought it might have been a pipe bomb because my late brother had been pipe-bombed.
He fired four shots from a legally held gun over the gang's heads. They ran off, and there were no injuries.
"I was really afraid for my life, to be honest with you," Mr O'Connor said.
The O'Connor family have been subjected to a number of attacks by loyalist paramilitaries in the past.