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Pair charged with making threats to kill after attack

A forensic investigator examines a car in west Belfast where a man was shot in the head on Thursday. Picture by Mal McCann
A forensic investigator examines a car in west Belfast where a man was shot in the head on Thursday. Picture by Mal McCann A forensic investigator examines a car in west Belfast where a man was shot in the head on Thursday. Picture by Mal McCann

AN 18-year-old man and a 50-year-old man were charged on Friday with making threats to kill in connection with a shooting which left a man critically ill in hospital.

The pair are to appear before Belfast Magistrates Court on Saturday.

The man, named locally as Martin Gavin, remained in a critical condition in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast on Friday after he was shot in the head on Thursday.

The father-of-three, who is in his forties, was attacked as he sat in a car outside his Rossnareen Avenue home shortly before 9am.

He is understood to be from the Traveller community.

Meanwhile, three men escaped injury after shots were fired at a van in west Belfast on Friday.

A masked man fired shots at the men, believed to be members of the Traveller community, who were in the van outside shops on Monagh Road shortly after 4.15pm. The attacker later ran off.

No one was injured in the shooting.

Police said they are still trying to establish a motive.

Sinn Féin MLA for West Belfast Pat Sheehan called for an end to gun attacks.

"Both these shootings were reckless acts and both endangered life," he said.

"There can be no room for these gun attacks in our society.

"It is too early to state whether these attacks are linked but whoever thinks they can take guns onto the streets and put our communities at risk is wrong.

"Anyone with information should take this to the PSNI before we are dealing with a death on our streets."