THE INLA has been blamed for murdering a young Catholic man in Derry.Emmett Shiels (22) was shot by a group of masked men on the Creggan estate in Derry in the early hours of Tuesday morning.The victim, who was working as a pizza delivery man, had intervened when a friend was confronted by a gang of armed and masked men believed to be from the INLA.He was chased by the gang and shot in the lower body.He was rushed to hospital but died a short time later.Shiels lived only a few hundred yards from the scene of Tuesday's shooting in the nearby Bogside.He was due to become a father in the near future and came from a well respected republican family in the area.On Tuesday Shiels' family laid flowers at the scene of the shooting insisting that his murder had not been mistaken identity.The dead man's sister Maureen Wilkinson called on those who murdered her brother to give themselves up "for the family's sake". "I don't know how they can sleep," she said. "Even out of the love of God or something, go and hand themselves in and give us peace of mind knowing that the perpetrators are behind bars." Wilkinson said her family had been left devastated by her brother's murder."He was a good young fella, he was about to become a father himself and that baby's never going to see his father." Shiels's adopted father, Patsy Moore, said his family had been made aware who had been responsible for his son's murder. "People in the area are helping overwhelmingly," he said. "They've come out in big numbers and they've given information to the police, and we would appeal to anyone who has any information to hand it over." Condemning the murder as ``barbaric'', local parish priest Father Stephen McLaughlin said:"This is quite brutal, quite horrific. "The details I have is that a young man was pursued by a group, a few people possibly masked, who shot him dead in a grassy area on the approach to the Creggan."When I heard the news I just felt sick - you are being taken back to a place you thought you had left behind."It is going to be a nightmare for this young man's immediate family and the local community will be shocked."The PSNI later defended failing to turn up at the scene until two hours after the shooting, claiming it feared that gunmen had been lying-in-wait to shoot police officers arriving at the scene.Chief Inspector Chris Yates said his officers had responded to the initial shooting within ten minutes but a decision had been taken that they would not attend the scene immediately because of fears of an ambush."The initial call was that masked men were lying in wait in the area, so under those circumstances and with the terrorist incident we have seen most recently in Fermanagh where two police officers were nearly killed, we were not going to go blindly rushing into an area until we were satisfied it was safe to do so," he said.At the weekend the INLA in nearby Strabane was accused of vigilantiasm after it threatened a number of men to desist from their alleged involvement in crime or they would face ``extreme consdequences''.In June last year the INLA shot dead Derry doorman Brian McGlynn in front of his partner accusing him of involvement in drug dealing.Tuesday's murder came less than a week after dissidents in Derry ordered a number of men they accused of being involved in anti-social activity to leave the city or face being shot dead.Mr Shiels was not one of those threatened and is understood to have been innocent. Last month the Real IRA was blamed for a punishment attack on a 27 year-old Derry man during which he was beaten with baseball bats by a gang of up to eight men.Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson described Mr Shiels' murder as a ``despicable and cowardly act carried out by evil people.''"There will be no turning back to the dark days of the past, we will not allow our achievements to be destroyed by violence that has no place in our society," he said."My deepest sympathies are with the young man's family at this very difficult time."Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness , who knew the dead man's family said: "The people who have perpetrated this act have nothing to offer society. "They do not represent anyone in Derry or in the wider community. "These actions have no place in our future."