I have been sitting beside Kevin for three days in hospital willing him to live,” said Mrs Jackson, who was accompanied by her 30-year-old brother, Mark Wayman, for support.She said: “I have had to take our Jake to hospital to kiss Daddy goodbye because he isn’t coming home I have told Jake that Daddy’s a hero Please help us find out who has done this to our family I just want someone to please say who did it. I have lost my best friend.”West Yorkshire Police said Mr Jackson, who was a maintenance engineer, ran after the two men outside his home after he and his wife found them trying to steal a Toyota car owned by Mrs Jackson’s parents, at 2.15pm on 31 December.He was discovered with severe head injuries after being attacked with a screwdriver-type implement and never regained consciousness.Detective Superintendent Bob Bridgestock said Mr Jackson had received five “stab-type” puncture wounds to his head, one of which penetrated his skull “It was a savage attack. It was extremely brutal and he was left to die in the street,” he said.More than 50 officers have been enlisted to undertake the investigation, which will include visiting all known car criminals in the area. House-to-house inquiries are under way and the Toyota that the two men were trying to steal is being examined by forensic experts.Det Supt Bridgestock emphasised the need for justice and urged local criminals not to protect Mr Jackson’s attackers.”Those who did this should not be protected.

This is not property theft, this is the destruction of people’s lives,” he said, adding that while the police advise the public to avoid confronting criminals, Mr Jackson had reacted instinctively by racing after the two men.”It was reactive, he was immediately out of the house and was giving chase. I don’t think he stopped to think who or how many he was going to meet We say to people: ‘Do not confront’. If we have time to think, most of us don’t, but in a lot of cases crimes happen spontaneously and people react He acted instinctively. He did what most of us would do if property is being broken into,” said Det Supt Bridgestock.Minutes before the fatal encounter, Mr Jackson had been dozing on the sofa at his home when he was alerted by his wife, who had spotted the two suspects from an upstairs bedroom, that someone was tampering with her parents’ car.Mr Jackson, who was 6ft 4ins tall, immediately ran out of the house while his wife rang the emergency services.The two offenders attempting to break into the Toyota are described as white, aged 18 to 22, with short dark hair and athletically built One was sitting inside the vehicle when they were spotted.. There are many people in Belfast who have little contact with those of a different denomination. They do not work with, live among, share education with or even speak much to people on “the other side”.

If he or she goes on to college things can relax a little but, even though most colleges are ostensibly mixed, they may be self-segregated in many ways. At work, the segregation is likely to continue, and many east Belfast Protestants never even visit the Catholic heartland in the west of the city.A surprising number of mixed marriages take place in Belfast, though these have little discernible effect on divisions. One partner tends to take on the political colour of the other, or they go to live in one of the few mixed areas.The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which is the basis for the political system, commends reconciliation and initiatives to promote integrated education and mixed housing. The devolved government has not, however, made this a high priority. Instead, the political system has built into its heart a recognition of the unwelcome but inescapable realities of division, with members of the Belfast Assembly being obliged to register as Unionists, nationalists or “others”.Optimists hope that the fledgling government will provide a new model for co- operation, but this has not happened yet. No one has come up with a blueprint for decreasing segregation, partly because there is no big demand for integration in housing or schools.Segregation has been a fact of Belfast life for two centuries and few see much advantage in aiming for such a controversial goal.

Three decades of the Troubles have made things much worse, while other pressures have been generated by the steady growth in the Catholic population.At its starkest this is seen in the sectarian cockpit of north Belfast, where many on both sides see themselves as locked in a battle for territory. The demand is not for integration but for peacelines, each of which further cements segregation.. Segregation between adjoining Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast is as rigid as ever, and is actually increasing despite the beginnings of peace, a new study by a leading Northern Ireland academic reports. It shows that only 5 per cent of the workforce are Catholics in companies located in Protestant-dominated areas, and only 8 per cent are Protestant in Catholic-area companies.But the most startling fact Dr Shirlow reports is that religious segregation has become worse, at least in inner-city Belfast, since the dawn of peace seven years ago.This is shown, he says, by unpublished results from the 2001 census, by housing figures and by the community survey he oversaw. The new census figures show that while in Belfast in 1991 63 per cent of people lived in areas that were at least 90 per cent Catholic or 90 per cent Protestant, the figure for 2001 was 66 per cent.Figures from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive show that between 1994 and 1996, more than 3,000 people across the province moved into areas dominated by the other Christian denomination. However, between 1996 and 2001, 6,000 families asked the Housing Executive to be moved because of intimidation.Dr Shirley began the survey, done by trained researchers in both communities and followed up by academic interviews, after being told by a government official that the problem of growing sectarian segregation “did not exist”.The survey was conducted among 4,800 households in pairs of adjoining divided communities. They were (Catholic community followed by Protestant): Ardoyne/Upper Ardoyne, New Lodge/Tiger’s Bay, Whitewell/ White City, Short Strand/Ballymacarrett, Lenadoon/Suffolk Estate, Clonard/Shankill.The phenomenon of growing segregation was largely an inner-city Belfast one although it could be seen in towns such as Portadown, Lurgan and Carrickfergus, Dr Shirley said.