Every violent death is tragic, but the death of Gavin Brett, a Protestant from a mixed marriage killed by loyalists who assumed him to be a Catholic, was particularly poignant.
Witnesses said Gavin was standing with a mostly Catholic group of friends on a corner opposite the Hollybrook housing development on the Hightown Road, on the outskirts of Glengormley.
"They were just standing there singing songs like The Fields of Athenry," said one witness who described how Gavin would walk around in a Glasgow Rangers football top while his friends wore Celtic tops.
Just after 11 p.m. on Sunday a car approached and stopped and several shots rang out. As Gavin's friends jumped over the fence to escape the gunmen, one of them, his Catholic best friend, was hit in the ankle.
A crowd soon gathered, and British soldiers and then Gavin's father, a specialist paramedic who had been helicoptered into Omagh to treat victims of the 1998 bombing, attempted in vain to resuscitate him.
Flowers lay against a fence at the scene of the 18-yearold's death yesterday. A small bullet hole was circled in white chalk. The loyalist paramilitary Red Hand Defenders - a cover name used by both the Ulster Defence Association and Loyalist Volunteer Force in the past - admitted the killing.
In a statement which made no apology for having killed a Protestant, the group promised to increase its attacks.
Mr Brett's immediate family were too distraught to talk to journalists but his uncle, Mr Peter Brett, described his nephew as "a bright shining light", and condemned his loyalist killers.
"These people are dosing themselves full of drugs and alcohol, driving down a road and opening fire on anybody. These people are demon-possessed. There is a devil alive in Northern Ireland," he said.
Describing his nephew's family as Christians, he made a contrast between them and the "Jezebel mothers who harbour these people and know exactly what they are doing".
The area of the shooting, all middle-class, semi-detached homes with cars in the drive, appears miles from the sectarian conflict of Belfast. However, while it is mixed, Hollybrook and its surroundings are predominantly Catholic and within easy reach of a number of loyalist areas.
Condemning the attack, Mr David Ford, the Alliance party Assembly member for the area, said because of the area's makeup "any average UDA thug would assume a crowd standing there were Catholics".
Less than a mile away, in April, a Protestant man was beaten to death by loyalists who also mistook him for a Catholic. On the same night, it is believed they attempted to kidnap a Catholic from close to where Gavin was killed. In 1997 a leading GAA official was shot by the LVF in the car-park of St Enda's GAA club nearby.
Local youths who knew Gavin were clearly upset at his death and the seemingly random way it had taken place. Sean Derry (16) described the dead man as his "best mate".
"I heard three gun shots and rushed out. Someone said `Gavin's dead' and I just started crying," he said.