ACCORDING to locals her name was Barbara. She was nine years old. They weren't sure of her surname. She was sitting on her father's knee last night when a gunman walked up to a house at Ashfield Gardens in north Belfast - and shot her dead.
A teenager, aged 19, and said to be a friend rather than a relation, was wounded in the attack. He was taken to the Mater Hospital in north Belfast, where his condition this morning was described as critical.
The gunman would not have known his victims were a child and a teenager. At 8.45 p.m. last night he was driven to Ashfield Gardens, in Skegoneill, off the Antrim Road, in a car.
Detectives believe it was a white Nissan Sunny which was hijacked earlier at the Shamrock Club in Ardoyne. It was later found abandoned in Upper Meadow Street, New Lodge.
The gunman went to the living room window and opened fire indiscriminately, people said. When he had finished shooting he got back into the car, which sped away. Young men who caught a glimpse of the car said there were at least three people inside.
"He must have fired at least 10 shots," said one neighbour, a nurse, who ran to the scene to help. "He just shot through the living room window. Anybody could've been inside. Can you imagine it? The wee girl on her daddy's knee," she said.
"The fellow who was injured looked in a bad way, but he just kept shouting, look after the girl, look after the girl. He knew it was bad for her. Her father and her mother were there and they were in a terrible way. It was hectic.
"I felt the little girl's pulse, but God love her, there wasn't much to feel. I think she was dead before she was put info the ambulance," she said.
The nurse thought the mother was a deaf mute and that the murdered girl may have been deaf. Her son said: "She used to get a taxi to school every day and she knew sign language." The nurse said: "It's bad enough 16 children being shot dead in Scotland without this sort of thing happening here now," she said.
The RUC said they didn't know yet who was responsible. They appealed for assistance in finding Barbara's killers.
