"We beat him unmercifully," said George McMurray after racing down the hill toward the gunman, who was widely suspected of being on a terrorist mission for one of the paramilitary Protestant gangs.

Leaders of several Protestant paramilitary gangs denied that the marauder represented their factions of Northern Ireland's violence.

Protestant gangs prevented Catholics from ever occupying five refurbished homes there.

"Down there, they're together," he said of his two kinds of clients, from the I.R.A. and the Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant paramilitary gang.

Catholic parents were prevented from escorting their children to school by Protestant gangs throwing stones.

At the same time last year, the death toll as a result of sectarian violence was only 44, of which 14 were attributed to Protestant gangs, the police said.

Rival Protestant gangs fought battles in which four people died last summer.

But people couldn't protect their areas from the British forces and the Protestant gangs, so someone stepped in and promised to do it.

When the force cracked down on Protestant gangs in 1986, there were more than 500 retaliatory attacks on officers and their homes.