The family of Mr Charles Folliard has appealed for no retaliation for his killing. They say they could not bear to watch another family go through the kind of suffering they are experiencing.
Mr Folliard's family insisted that the former loyalist prisoner had "turned a new leaf" after being jailed for 14 years for conspiracy to murder and possession of firearms in 1991.
Mr Folliard had been part of an Ulster Defence Association plot to kill a Catholic colleague while working at a quarry in Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone. However, he backed out and called the Samaritans, giving them details of the location of the booby-trap device. It is understood that he served his jail sentence in the lower security Maghaberry Prison rather than in the UDA wing of the top-security Maze jail.
After serving seven years of his sentence, Mr Folliard was released in 1998 and returned to his home village of Douglas Bridge. He worked there as a self-employed gardener. His family yesterday insisted that he had severed all paramilitary links and had been looking forward to playing a full part in the community.
Speaking through their Presbyterian minister, the Rev David Reid, the family said Mr Folliard had been a "young man deeply loved by all of his family and by many in the local community".
Mr Folliard had been dating his 16-year-old Catholic girlfriend for several months. She lived in the nationalist Ballycolman Estate in Strabane, where he was shot dead just outside her front door on Monday night.