POLICE IN Derry confirmed yesterday that the 38-year-old man shot dead in a house in the Waterside area of the city early yesterday was a well-known drugs dealer.
Jim McConnell, who was originally from the Shantallow area of the city, was gunned down in the hallway of his rented accommodation at Woodlands in Prehen.
Two masked men, both of them armed, shot Mr McConnell after they forced their way into the terrace house where he lived at 12.15am. He died of his wounds in Altnagelvin Hospital.
Mr McConnell, a single man with one son, was murdered just two weeks after public statements from dissident Republican paramilitary groups, under the covername of Community Action Against Drugs, threatened to take what they called “direct action” against alleged drugs dealers.
Mr McConnell was jailed in 2006 at the Crown Court in Derry following his conviction for possessing cocaine with intent to supply after a police undercover operation discovered a large quantity of cocaine in a van in the Buncrana Road area of Derry.
He had moved into the Woodlands house in the quiet suburb of Prehen shortly after he was released from jail last year.
Sammy Nicholl of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service said Mr McConnell had sustained several gunshot wounds to the chest.
“We got the call-out shortly after midnight. Two paramedics found the casualty unconscious in his home. They tried to resuscitate him, but he died later in hospital.”
Foyle MP and SDLP leader Mark Durkan described those responsible as “just a bunch of sinister murderers” who spoke and acted for no one. “They have left a family in grief, a quiet neighbourhood in shock and a city in disgust.
“We have to wise up to the fact that those behind this murder are organised and seem to have their own operation going on.”
Sinn Féin Assemblyman Raymond McCartney said Mr McConnell’s killers had left his family to “pick up the pieces of his murder”. He added that there was no support in the nationalist-republican community for such actions.
The mayor of Derry, Gerard Diver, said: “It is the type of murder which takes us back to the dark days of the Troubles.
“It is an horrific start to 2009, and I would appeal that anyone with information should give that information to the police.”
The Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, William Hay, who lives in the Waterside area, described the killing as brutal.