TWO men and a woman from Co Antrim were jailed yesterday on charges arising from a UDA mob attack on a house in Larne which resulted in a family being intimidated from their home.
All three appeared in the dock of Belfast Crown Court, where they heard Judge Alistair Devlin describe the incident last March as one which would have "absolutely terrified the occupants".
The victim - whose family including a disabled stepson were at home when their Knockdhu Park home was targeted on Sunday March 30, 2014.
He was beaten unconscious in his kitchen by a masked and armed gang. Senior police at the time blamed the attack on the UDA.
Greenisland men Steven Adam Blackwood (30) from Moyard Gardens and 35-year old Stephen Mettleton from Rossmore Green initially faced a total of four charges arising from the incident, including attempting to murder the occupant.
They denied the charges and a non-jury Diplock trial commenced at the end of September. However, when new charges were added to the bill, the pair admitted a charge intimidating the occupants to leave their home, and also admitted a charge of affray.
The remaining counts, including attempted murder, were left on the books, after it emerged that the Crown could offer no evidence to suggest that Blackwood and Mettleton were centrally involved.
Both men pleaded guilty to intimidation and affray on the grounds that were were part of the crowd which gathered outside the man's house, and the intent of that crowd was to force the man to leave his home.
Telling the pair that their presence as part of the 70-strong was both pre-planned and organised, Blackwood and Mettleton were each jailed for 10 months by Judge Devlin, who said the purpose of the crowd was to intimidate the occupant and family "through a display of force to leave the area."
Around 12 of the 70-strong gang broke their way into the victim's home, after gathering outside the property armed with hammers, baseball bats, machetes, hatchets and sticks.
Also charged in relation to last March's event was 38-year old Elizabeth Sharon Milligan, from Grange Park in Ballyclare, who admitted a single charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice."
Milligan - who served a significant prison sentence in England linked to the importation of 40kgs of heroin - made a false alibi to police in respect of Mettleton, who at the time of the incident was her boyfriend.
She jailed for six months.
