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Ian Price
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13-year-old Ian Price after his first 'punishment' beating
Ian Price is a walking timebomb – primed to explode in the face of a UDA drug dealer.
This week Price lifts the lid on an extraordinary fight for survival. Days after escaping a loyalist murder squad the 28-year-old broke cover to put a smoking gun to the head of a major dealer in a desperate attempt to buy his life.
Speaking to the Sunday World at a secret location, Price said he has been backed into a corner, driven to the brink of suicide by more than a decade of sustained campaigns of intimidation, threats and violence.
A grown man now, he was only 13 when he first felt the full force of a paramilitary punishment squad.
In 1999 five UVF men threw him to the ground as he played with friends in Newtownards, making his pals sit and watch as they battered him with baseball bats studded with nails before putting a gun to his head and giving him 24 hours to get out of the country.
The youngster was left with a shattered elbow, broken fingers and deep puncture wounds to his arms and legs.
15 years, nine punishment beatings and six shootings later he has had enough and is aiming to preserve his life in the only way he knows how - with a defiant message to the senior UDA drug dealer who ordered the latest attack.
“I know all your secrets, everything, I can blow every one of you out of the water and that is exactly what I will do if you do not call off the dogs,” he said.
The Sunday World is aware of the identity of the 44-year-old Co. Down drugs baron. He uses what appears to be a legitimate business connected to the motor trade as a cover for his drug dealing activities selling meth, cannabis, and Ecstasy.
Split from his wife he has shacked up with a 26-year-old trophy girlfriend who ferries drugs for her sugar daddy in the sleek BMW saloon he bought for her.
The dealer, who has no convictions for drugs, was a major suspect in the murder of druggie Wazy Paul – one of Northern Ireland’s major dealers he was gunned down outside his home on Bangor’s Kilcooley estate in the summer of 1997.
He was lifted and questioned but never charged, but was it was enough to have him expelled from the UVF of which he was a member at the time.
The gout sufferer was spotted hobbling across the forecourt of an east Belfast filling station before getting into a top-of-the-range Mercedes with his girlfriend, the day after Price escaped his clutches.
Price, who insists he has never been a member of a paramilitary organisation, admits he has worked for the SEA drugs boss, helping him to grow cannabis plants, before their relationship turned sour.
On a visit to Larne to visit relatives this week, he was ambushed by a van-load of men wearing balaclavas.
“I knew him [drug dealer] straight away and I knew this was going to be bad.”
Flung against a wall one of his attackers forced him to stretch out his arm. They hit him repeatedly with a baseball bat wrapped in barb wire, forcing him to the ground they tried to smash his ankle before trying to use a cordless drill on his leg.
He now has five fresh fractures to add to his collection of broken bones.
Throughout the attack they told him they were going to kill him, take him away in the back of a van and kill him.
“I have no doubt they were going to murder me, they told me they were going to do it. I just managed to break free and run across some fields.”
He said the dealer blames him for the destruction of a cannabis crop. Price initially advised him on how to cultivate the crop before feeding him false information which led to the plants withering and dying.
Most damagingly for the dealer is that he is withholding a slice of the drug profits from his South East Antrim bosses in Rathcoole. Sources have told us the terror group leadership is totally unaware of his narcotics business which is funding a lavish lifestyle.
The revelation that he is using the UDA name to feather his own nest will bring him into direct conflict with SEA boss Gary Fisher. Loyalist sources have told us he is in a panic after Price used Facebook to warn him he was prepared to lift the lid on his drug dealing secret.
In the last few days Price has drifted from one friend to another sleeping on floors and settees. He can’t go home for fear of attack and visiting his six children is out of the question.
“They are sitting outside my family’s homes, waiting for me. Men in cars with balaclavas and baseball bats.”
The police have warned him loyalist paramilitaries intend to kill him.
Battle hardened and scarred for life, wincing like an arthritic pensioner his shattered body is held together by mish-mash of steel pins and rods – “it takes me a while to get going in the morning.”
Price’s destiny was set the moment he first felt the full force of a baseball bat on his 13 year-old ankle. The memory still has the power to reduce him to tears.
He inevitably drifted into a life of crime, countless threats followed, he spent time in jail – a product of the savage ‘justice’ meted out by the paramilitaries.
“They have made me what I am today,” he said.
“If I could have one wish it would be to be back in P5, I would do things differently. I didn’t stand a chance, what sort of life was I going to have.”
Tragically the 13-year-old Ian Price was wrongly accused of stealing a gun – the crime which led to his punishment beating baptism.
Wiping away his tears the steely glare returns.
“I just want to be left in peace, I will leave them alone if they leave me alone, if they don’t I will tell the Sunday World everything I know, I can bring them down.”