Armed man who left shoppers in fear after walking around mall with a gun and a knife is jailed

A Lisburn man who left shoppers in fear of their lives by walking around a busy shopping centre with a gun and a knife “in full public view,” was handed a two-year sentence yesterday.

Ordering 50-year-old Gregory Wallace to serve six months in jail and the rest under supervised licence conditions, Judge Patrick Lynch KC said the “bizarre” incident at Bow Street Mall almost a year ago had “engendered genuine fear” in the public who were there.

Praising the police for the way they dealt with the potentially dangerous situation, the Craigavon Crown Court Judge told Wallace, who sat in the dock with his head bowed throughout the 40-minute hearing, that while he knew the handgun tucked into his waistband only fired ball bearings, neither the police nor witnesses at the scene knew that which “emphasises the considerable danger that the people around the defendant felt”.

At an earlier hearing Wallace, from Johnston Way in the city, entered guilty pleas to six of the nine offences against him relating to events at Bow Street Mall on February 22 last year including having a firearm, namely an airsoft pistol, without a certificate, having an airsoft pistol loaded with metal ball bearings under suspicious circumstances, possessing two knives in public, theft of £54 of groceries from Tesco and two counts of having loaded firearms in public, namely an airsoft rifle and a pistol, “without lawful authority or reasonable excuse”.

Opening the facts of the case, prosecuting counsel Ian Tannahill praised the bravery of a customer in a Costa coffee shop who engaged Wallace in conversation even as he realised armed response officers and police dogs were waiting to swoop.

As he was being cuffed, Wallace shouted about “being a soldier and Covid-19 was his enemy … and he directly asked police to shoot him”.

During police interviews, Wallace said he had taken a double dose of his medications along with alcohol and explained the “domestic stress” he was under.

Defence counsel Joel Lindsay revealed that in addition to significant mental health issues which had been exacerbated during the pandemic, Wallace’s wife had suffered two strokes a couple of weeks before the incident which had left her brain damaged and effectively dying.