A GUNMAN shot and
wounded a man sitting in a car parked in a busy street in the centre
of Paisley yesterday. The gunman escaped in a waiting car which was
later found abandoned. The shooting was the third in the town in the
past three weeeks.
Suffering from a stomach wound, the injured man, Mr Robert Cochrane,
33, of Darrock Drive, Erskine, crossed the street to the sheriff court
where he handed police a piece of paper on which he had written the
registration number of the car, a red Montego. An ambulance took him to
hospital but he left after treatment.
Police said two men had been in the victim's car. The other man
escaped unhurt.
The attacker used a handgun, and stood only yards from the red Ford
Escort.
One bullet went through the windscreen, leaving a neat hole. The front
passenger door window was shattered. Another bullet ricocheted and went
through a window in the court building across the street.
0 A witness described the incident. Mr Robert Crossan, 53, of
Ferguslie Park Avenue, Paisley, was in the Court Bar in St James Street
when he heard shots. ''I ran out and I saw a man coming from the red
Escort and he came over and asked for a piece of paper so that he could
write down the number of the red Montego.
''The young fellow came out of the car door and said: 'I was only
getting a lift down the road and somebody fired through the car window.'
''I gave him a piece of paper and he wrote down the registration
number. The Montego, which had been parked outside the sheriff court,
swung over to this side of the road and shot off on the wrong side. The
door flew open and a young chap was sitting inside driving. He was
wearing a tan suede jacket.'' The car headed for the town centre.
The Escort was left with its passenger door lying wide open and glass
littering the pavement.
A disabled sticker on the windscreen bore the name ''Hugh Cochrane''.
Police said they were anxious to contact people who were in the
vicinity at about 3.55pm, and who may have seen a man get into a red
Montego car.
In the first of the other two attacks in Paisley a man was shot in a
flatin the town centre. A week later gunmen attacked Mr Cochrane's
father's house in Oliphant Crescent.
They shot up the front door of the council house and shot his brother
Brian, 37, in the face.
Last night Mr Hugh Cochrane, senior, 53, spoke of a vendetta which
''must end before someone is murdered''.
Last year the two men and a third brother, Hugh, were cleared of
shooting charges in the High Court in Glasgow.
They themselves were shot in the Ferguslie Park area of Paisley in the
early hours of the morning before the alleged incident from which they
were cleared.
A man was jailed for seven years for slashing one of the brothers as
he left a funeral breakfast.
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