UDA boss under death threat after biting senior UVF figure on cheek during drunken row
The pair were regular drinking buddies but things turned sour during one boozing session in the last few weeks
Brian McLean is believed to have fled to Scotland
Busted UDA commander ‘Scotch’ Brian McLean is under death threat from the UVF.
As previously revealed, the former South East Antrim (SEA) UDA chief was ordered out of the country last week after a series of incidents, including three attacks on people by his pitbull-type dog.
It has now emerged the SEA leadership moved after rival terror group the UVF warned if he wasn’t kicked out of the country, they would shoot him dead.
The threat was issued on the back of a bizarre incident in which McLean bit a senior UVF figure on the cheek during a drunken row, according to sources.
The Sunday World understands McLean had struck up a friendship with the UVF member after he returned to Carrick following a period living in Newtownards, where he was made commander of the SEA UDA faction based in the Co Down town.
Sources say the pair were regular drinking buddies but things turned sour during one boozing session in the last few weeks.
A row erupted which ended with McLean launching an attack on his drinking buddy, biting him and taking a chunk of flesh out of his cheek.
The incident prompted the UVF’s South East Antrim brigadier to warn his opposite number in the UDA that unless they took action against their man, he would be killed.
Patience with McLean had already been wearing thin. He had been on the wrong end of a kicking carried out by the organisation after a drunken rampage outside a woman’s house in Carrick.
The woman had once been close to him. When he arrived at her home under the influence of alcohol, her current partner – a UDA member – rang a leading member in Rathcoole. He, in turn, sent a team to dish out the beating.
Read more
Last week we revealed the convicted woman beater had fled the country after being given 72 hours to get out.
His increasingly unpredictable behaviour is being put down to addictions. He escaped with a probation order when he appeared in court in Belfast last month after battering his girlfriend. During a vicious domestic assault, he had ripped clumps out of her hair.
The goon admitted attacking his now ex-partner and smashing up her flat. He was handed a two-year probation order for the shocking attack which resulted in the panic-stricken victim fleeing the area and moving home.
The order requires McLean to comply with rehabilitative programmes as required by his probation officer.
He was one of three men who were tried and acquitted of the murder of Geordie Gilmore in Carrickfergus in 2017.
There are now fears that with nothing to lose, he might be tempted to exact revenge for his exile by spilling the beans on the Gilmore shooting as well as the murder in January 2020 of terminally ill Glenn Quinn.
Mr Quinn was battered to death by members of SEA UDA. No one has ever been convicted but McLean was part of the UDA unit based in the Glenfield estate in the town believed to have been behind the attack.
McLean’s loyalty during the year-long Gilmore feud, to the then-leadership, was rewarded with promotion to commander in an SEA faction, according to sources.
That faction was believed to be based in Newtownards where he was a close associated of feud boss Adrian Price.
Price’s faction was jettisoned by SEA in March this year and was then locked in a feud with North Down UDA. Homes were attacked and dozens threatened during the six-month feud.
By the time the violence ended, McLean had left Newtownards to return to his old stomping ground in Carrick. He headed the North Down and Ards Peninsular unit which was mired in the drugs trade, but he quit and left Price to fight his own battles.
“Brian thought he was a big shot,” said a source. “He was warned so many times but he ignored it and in the end it was inevitable.”
It is understood he was given 72 hours earlier this week to leave the country but was gone within a day. It is believed that he has returned to his native Scotland.
Last month, McLean was lucky to escape jail. Laganside Magistrates Court heard how his then-girlfriend had been asleep on the sofa at her home in Newtownards when McLean turned up drunk in the late afternoon and started attacking her.
