He was first sent to prison on the evidence of a supergrass . He spent 31 days on hunger strike in 1982 . He was released in the mid-1980s and it was during this period that he became acquainted with the British agent Brian Nelson , who had infiltrated the UDA . McQuiston was soon sent back to the Maze Prison after being caught in Portadown with masks , hoods , and weapons . Upon his release in 1991 , he survived an assassination attempt by the IRA who had broken down his door with a sledgehammer and tried to shoot him with an AK-47 . He evaded his attackers by escaping through his loft . In an interview with journalist Peter Taylor in the 1990s , he stated that he had not been overly perturbed by the attempt on his life . He offered the following explanation for his nonchalance It 's a war . I 'm a soldier in the UDA so I 'm entitled to be shot at now and again . I think I was extremely lucky . On 23 October 1993 , he was on the Shankill Road conducting business for the Loyalist Prisoners ' Association ( LPA ) . He had just gone into a pub when an IRA bomb went off in a fish shop below the LPA headquarters where it was believed senior UDA members , including Ulster Freedom Fighters ( UFF ) brigadier Johnny Adair , were having a meeting . The IRA 's Intelligence was faulty and the meeting had been cancelled ; instead of wiping out Adair and his comrades , 10 people were killed in the shop below , including two children , the shop 's owner , and his daughter , and Thomas Begley , one of the bombers . McQuiston helped pull the dead and wounded from the devastated building
IRA bomb went off in a fish shop
Shankill Road bombing
Billy McQuiston