Ainsworth Avenue on the Woodvale Road with serious injuries and under questioning revealed a story of Elliott's death. He claimed that he and Elliott had been drinking in the UDA clubs of the Shankill Road and had then driven in their official WDA car to Sandy Row to continue drinking. According to his testimony they had taken a short cut past the lower Falls Road where they had been stopped by a Provisional IRA roadblock. The republicans recognised Elliott and separated the two men, beating up Elliott's companion but shooting the WDA leader dead. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) rejected the story and publicly declared it had no faith in the testimony. They claimed that no UDA member would ever drive along the Falls to get to Sandy Row and added that the Provisionals would never have killed one member and let another off with a beating. The police added that they believed Elliott had actually been killed on the Shankill and that his companion had been released after being assaulted with instructions to relay the story he had told them. Within days Joseph Kelly, 47, and James Joseph Reynolds, 16, both Catholic civilians, had been killed by the East Belfast UDA in revenge for the killing of Elliott, after the eastern leadership claimed to have accepted the IRA story as truth. A further story was circulated that Elliott had been killed for being a member of the Ulster Citizens Army, a purported Marxism-supporting loyalist paramilitary group which had been up concocted by the British Intelligence Corps in an ultimately successful attempt to strangle at birth the UVF's move to the left. In fact, Elliott's death had been the result of a drunken brawl that ended in gunfire. Elliott, a notoriously heavy drinker, had gone to Sandy Row to get a gun that he had loaned to a local UDA member. According to witnesses, the heavily inebriated Elliott entered the UDA club in the area and began waving a gun around. A patron of the club grabbed the weapon and punched Elliott with the fight spilling outside. An unidentified Sandy Row UDA man pointed a shotgun at Elliott outside but the weapon went off and hit Elliott. The gunman fled to England soon afterwards only to return in 1983, reportedly remorseful, and confessed his part in the killing. Despite this, no convictions were made after the case against this man