Further arrest in connection with prison officer murder
Police investigating the murder of prison officer David Black have made another arrest this morning.
The married father-of-two was gunned down in a high-speed motorway ambush last Thursday as he drove to work at Maghaberry prison in Co Antrim.
Yesterday Mr Black’s family denounced his killers as cowards during his funeral in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.
A Police Service of Northern Ireland spokesman said: “Detectives investigating the murder of David Black on the M1 motorway on Thursday November 1 have arrested a 46-year-old man in the Lurgan area.”
He has been taken to Antrim police station for questioning.
Three men, two in the North and one in the Republic of Ireland, have been questioned and released by police.
Mr Black, 52, was killed by suspected dissident republicans, police believe. He is the first prison warder murdered by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland in 20 years.
Gunmen travelling in a stolen car fired on the victim’s Audi near a junction leading to Portadown, Co Armagh, as he was on his way to Maghaberry. The vehicle careered off the road and into a ditch.
At yesterday’s funeral at Molesworth Presbyterian Church in Cookstown, Mr Black’s daughter Kyra, 17, paid tribute to her “special hero”. His cousin and lifelong friend Jim Slaine said he hoped the perpetrators would get what they deserved.
Head of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland Roy Patton vowed that the efforts of the gunmen to drag the North backwards would not work.
Smartly-uniformed prison officers carried the coffin to the church in military fashion behind a Scottish bagpiper who played a lament.
Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson, Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable Matt Baggott and justice ministers north and south of the border attended the funeral in Co Tyrone.
Mr Slaine told mourners: “The people who did this to David are cowards to the extreme.
“They have probably never done a decent day’s living, unlike the man they killed.”
The funeral attracted thousands of people who crowded outside the doors of the packed church and into an adjoining hall.
A prison service hat, gloves and a single cream flower were carried on the Union flag-draped coffin as officers in immaculate navy blue uniforms and hats formed a guard of honour.
Trade unionists held a lunchtime rally in Belfast in opposition to the bloodshed.
