A 24-YEAR-OLD man has been unanimously found guilty of threatening to shoot a taxi driver.
Lee Hosie wiped tears from his eyes after also being convicted of possessing a firearm or imitation with intent to cause fear of violence and making off without paying his fare.
His three-day trial at Belfast Crown Court heard that when initially questioned, he denied being a man pictured on CCTV getting into the taxi.
Hosie, from the city's Shore Road, told police it couldn't be him because the suspect had "a wee hard man walk".
While he admitted in court he was that man, he insisted he was never armed or threatened to shoot the driver and that the allegations were made up.
It happened in the early hours of December 4, 2012, as loyalists mounted flag protests over restrictions on flying the Union flag at Belfast's City Hall.
The Value Cab driver told the court how he sat terrified after Hosie pointed a gun into his face and told him the only thing preventing him from "blowing his brains out" was a shortage of ammunition.
The Catholic driver said the threat was issued after he saw the gun in the footwell of the taxi.
The weapon had fallen to the floor when the driver braked hard at a set of traffic lights on a journey across the city from the Ross House flats in Mount Vernon to Donegall Pass.
He said Hosie "bent down and picked it up and put it back inside his coat and told me to mind my own business".
The driver said he had also questioned him about being either "a Prod, or a Taig... I told him I was a taxi driver trying to earn a living and what I was was nobody else's business".
At their destination Hosie got out of the taxi and approached two men in the street before returning to the cab.
Thinking he was about to pay the £6.60 fare, the driver wound down his window but Hosie "put his hand inside his coat and pulled out the gun and stuck it in my face. He pointed it directly in my face, about two feet away".
"He said he was going to blow my f****** brains out. He said that only for the fact he had so few bullets he would have f****** shot me."
The driver said at this point, he heard one of the men in the street telling Hosie to "wind his neck in" as they had "more important things to do".
He then drove away and notified his depot, who contacted police.
Hosie maintained nothing of the sort ever happened and "if it's not accepted, then that's up to youse 'uns".
However, a jury of eight women and four men unanimously convicted him after just over two hours of deliberations on Friday.
He was remanded in custody ahead of sentencing next month.
