Give us your mobile phone footage from murder scene: PSNI

Police said yesterday they have examined CCTV coverage of the area showing a number of witnesses were present, and made an appeal to people whom they they believe had filmed footage of their own.

Paul McCready, 31 and from the Cliftonville area of north Belfast, died in hospital following what police described as an “altercation”.

It occurred while he was on a night out – understood to have been attended by his partner and younger brother among other people – at the Northern Whig pub in the city’s Cathedral Quarter, which continued onto the street outside. Police are treating the case as murder.

Asked at a press conference if he had reason to believe people were filming the incident, Detective Superintendant Kevin Geddes said: “A number of videos have been made available to us already, so yes, I think there were people who – with their cell phones – may have been recording what was going on.

“That’s very important for us, so we can see exactly what happened.”

Asked by the News Letter about the number and types of injury he sustained, Det Supt Geddes said: “It’s too early in the investigation to say exactly what his injuries were.”

He said it was hard to say how long the incident lasted.

He also could not shed light on a motive, or whether a man arrested at the scene had any connections to the victim.

At time of writing last night, it was thought that the 30-year-old man was still in custody.

Speaking of Mr McCready’s children, the detective added that “tragically, they have now been left today with a long life ahead of them with no dad”.

Mr McCready had been a keen footballer, and some people connected with his old club Newington (a team based around north Belfast’s Antrim Road) said he was “quite shy”, and “a devoted family man”.

Mr McCready is understood to have worked in an agricultural section of the Civil Service, and to have had a partner – Ruth – and two sons, Eoin and Paul, aged around nine and seven respectively.

Danny Hale, 46 and a friend of Mr McCready, said Mr McCready’s two sons had been playing football matches of their own earlier on Saturday.

“Paul went to both games, and headed out on Saturday night. And a few hours later, [he was] dead,” said Mr Hale.

“Everyone is just shellshocked.”

The whole ordeal has been like a “whirlwind” for his family, he added.

It is thought Mr McCready’s body is to be released to his relatives today.