He was one of a team of IRA men who placed bombs in the Balmoral Furnishings shop, in an industrial centre in Dunmurry, outside Belfast. The shop had not been paying their protection money. Only access to the shop was by running past Dunmurry RUC centre - which was problematic since the RUC men on the gate noticed and gave chase. The terrorists and the police exchanged fire, running across the road to the Crazy Prices supermarket, and the car park beyond. Two of the gang were injured and arrested. The others tried to hijack a car, but were stopped by police and arrested. They had thrown most of their weapons away, and claimed to be innocent by-standers, but one pistol was left in the car and discovered. The rest of the weapons were recovered. One newspaper headline was "shoot-out at the Crazy P" Among the weapons were 2 Astra 357 revolvers, an Astra automatic and a polish Radom 9mm pistol. Far as I can recall they weren't charged with bombing Balmoral Furnishings (which was destroyed, putting a number of local people out of work) but with firearms offences, due to difficulties in getting evidence linking them to the actual explosives.
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