Coroner finds shooting of North Belfast taxi driver Michael McGibbon was 'intended as a punishment'

Watch the UTV News report on the inquest into Michael McGibbon's death.

A coroner has ruled that the shooting of taxi driver close to his home in North Belfast almost six years ago was intended as a punishment.

Michael McGibbon died after he was shot twice in the leg, with one bullet severing an artery.

At the start of the inquest on Wednesday, the Coroner heard that Michael McGibbon had been ordered to meet people he was told were the New IRA in an alleyway at Butler Place in Ardoyne - or he would have had to leave the country.

The inquest heard that the 33-year-old thought that the order was possibly because of comments he had made 18 months prior about someone's partner. Police statements from his wife Joanne, who is a nurse, said she had packed a hospital bag just in case the people he was going to see shot him.

She spoke of how she frantically tried to save his life afterwards.

He died after emergency surgery in hospital, hours after the shooting.

The coroner heard that Mr McGibbon did not believe he was facing a genuine threat. In her findings she said he went by arrangement to the alley and was shot by members of a paramilitary organisation. She said it was intended to be a punishment shooting, but she was unable to identify who was involved. The coroner ruled that Mr McGibbon's death was due to haemorrhaging from a bullet wound to his left leg.

She offered her condolences to the victim's wife and four children.