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Round fired as pensioner arrested | |
(about 4 hours later) | |
Police have fired a type of baton round at a 75-year-old man who was armed with what appeared to be a revolver at a house in east Belfast. | |
The man was struck by two rounds during the incident in the Ballybeen area of Dundonald at about 0200 GMT on Sunday. | |
He had called police in an agitated state, telling them he was armed. | |
The pensioner is believed to have sustained relatively minor injuries. After being discharged from hospital, he was rearrested by police. | |
Forensics tests have been carried out at the scene at Enler Park Central, and investigators from the Police Ombudsman's office have been conducting house-to-house enquiries. | |
Tests | |
A firearm or replica weapon has been sent for tests, and the Police Ombudsman has appealed for information. | |
A PSNI spokesman said officers were treating the call-out as "a firearms incident". | |
The impact rounds fired were attenuated energy projectiles (AEPs), introduced in 2005 as a safer alternative to old-style baton rounds. | |
The police spokesman said AEPs were used in the incident as "an appropriate and proportionate tactical option to bring the matter to a safe conclusion". | |
According to official guidelines, AEP rounds are used "to dissuade or prevent a potentially violent person from their intended course of action and thereby neutralise the threat". |