ILLICIT TRAFFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 8, 9 July 1935, Page 9

ILLICIT TRAFFIC

CATTLE SMUGGLING

SHOOTING IN IRELAND

CLASH ON BOEDEE

Unltcd Press Association—lJy Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received July 9, 11 a.m.) LONDON, July 8. Guns are barking on the Ulster-Free State border, where lawless bands of cattle smugglers and British Customs patrols are in conflict.

Constable Mcllhagga, a Customs patrolman, was desperately wounded while questioning a suspect on the Armagh-Monoghan border. An accomplice of the suspect fired from the bushes, striking Constable Mcllhagga below the heart.'The suspect thereupon escaped.

The shooting was the culmination of British efforts to enforce the duties imposed on the Free State. Several herds, of which some forty or fifty head were worth between £500 and £600, were seized. Nevertheless, the smugglers were making large profits by buying cattle and reselling them in Ulster.

It is feared that the traffic will bankrupt farmers in the north of Ireland.

The smugglers will stop at nothing. They raided a number of pounds containing seized cattle, including one in County Tyrone, where they drove off forty head after a gun' battle with guards.

Britain has spent £750,000 in the effort to check the illicit traffic, but the Customs patrols are outnumbered by the smugglers, who are paying scouts £5 a night to watch points of

danger.