FOR at least 15 people around the border between Cavan and Leitrim last Wednesday was to be a big day, a day of reckoning.
This was the day when a long running dispute between an Austrian and a German who had settled in the area was to be resolved, one way or another.
The neighbours paid little heed to the small convoy which followed the winding road through the close countryside from the remote village of Bawnboy, Co Cavan, to an isolated area called Ballyleenan. The handful of cars, with a four wheel drive vehicle, stopped on the narrow road outside a small house surrounded by farm sheds.
In the convoy was the local sheriff, along with eight of his men and three gardai. Tommy Owens and his crew had come to enforce an eviction order, and the three gardai were on hand to make sure there was no breach of the peace. It was 12.40p.m., and as they got out of their cars they could see that the door of the house was open. Inside waited Gerrit Isenborger and his elderly mother.
Twelve miles away near the town of Ballinamore, in a Wild West style tourist ranch with log cabins and a saloon at the side of a lake, the Austrian waited for news. Michael Hehle had spent two years in the courts trying to persuade Isenborger to leave the house. Nothing worked, and now the law must take its course. He was worried about his tenant and former employee at the ranch.
As the sheriff and his assistants walked up to the door of the house, shots were fired at them.
Tommy Owens was hit in the elbow Paul Comiskey and Chris Raythorn received leg, hand and face injuries. The other men dived to the ground, then scrambled for cover behind their cars.
A hundred yards down the road, in the house closest to Isenborger's home, Joan O'Reilly looked up fearfully when she heard the shots. Suddenly there were shouting men running down to her house, some of them bleeding, and a garda asking to use the telephone.
As the police called in reinforcements, O'Reilly telephoned Isenborger. She and her husband, Sonny, were his closest friends in the area, and she knew what the shooting was all about. The German was frantic. She calmed him down and persuaded him to allow an ambulance up the road to collect the injured.
As the Garda's Emergency Response Unit rushed to the scene, the local armed detectives threw a cordon around the house.
An hour after the first shooting, another volley of shots was fired from the house. On the telephone Isenborger told O'Reilly that the people he could see gathering on a nearby hill had 20 seconds to get out of sight. He knew there were reporters there, and said they had done nothing to help him in the past when he had tried to gain attention for his dispute with Hehle.
The gardai pushed the cordon back a further half kilometre and quickly cleared everyone out of the line of sight of the house. Neighbours abandoned their farms and animals, and all traffic into the area was stopped. As both sides settled in for the siege, Isenborger told O'Reilly his mother had taken some pills. Shortly afterwards he told The Irish Times reporter by telephone: "This could have been avoided, but the press said libel here, libel there.
Asked about his mother he said it was too late, she had already died. "Go to hell", he said.
The superintendent for the area, P.J. Browne, called in two experienced Garda negotiators, Insp Tighe Foley and Det Supt Bill Somers, to talk to Isenborger. The 41 year old German told them again on Wednesday evening that this 82 year old mother was dead, but caused confusion later when he said he wanted to ask her a question.
As the negotiators tried to build a rapport With the man, other officers set about trying to learn something of his background.
It turned out that he had been in Ireland, since 1972, and had stayed in the west before moving with his mother to Cavan two years ago. The 6ft Isenborger, a fit, outdoors type, had few friends in the area.
They learned he had told a court during his dispute with Hehle that he had skills like circus knife throwing and archery. He had a licensed rifle, but it quickly became clear that he had other weapons as well.
Foley and Somers received an undertaking from Isenborger that he would not shoot at anyone in uniform, but he said if he saw plainclothes people around he would assume the gardai were about to storm the building. They assured him they had no intention of doing so, and that everyone wanted a peaceful end to the crisis with no more violence.
Isenborger told the negotiators he only wanted for himself and his mother to stay in the house. That had always been his only demand.
As locals gathered in the pubs of Bawnboy and Ballinamore, there was a good deal of sympathy for the besieged German. His mother was known to be ill and the distress of an eviction was well understood.
Neither side slept during Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning Isenborger asked for a newspaper, cigarettes and CocaCola. The lack of cigarettes was an indicator that he had not prepared for a long siege, but neither had he asked for any food. Two uniformed officers brought up the cigarettes and newspaper and a Diet Coke, which they left by arrangement outside the house. Isenborger asked that the Diet Coke be exchanged for the regular brand.
Later he emerged from the house and became upset when he saw how press photographers and a RTE van with a satellite dish had set up on a hill in the distance. Gardai believed at this stage that he had a high powered hunting rifle and could hit a target half a mile away. Everyone was cleared off the hill, and told to keep out of Isenborger's line of sight.
During the day the negotiators talked to Isenborger about his mother and about the weapons he had in the house. Senior officers were unhappy to hear the pros and cons of the legal dispute with Hehle being thrashed out over the airwaves, and made it clear this wasn't helping matters. Isenborger was normally calm but sometimes became agitated, and the situation was still extremely volatile.
The last thing they wanted was for him to become distressed by something he heard on the radio.
By Thursday evening they were persuaded that Pauline Isenborger was dead. They also got him to detail the weapons in the building five rifles and a revolver, as well as a bayonet which had been seen on the rifle used during the first shooting.
Isenborger wanted to stay with his mother, but officers told him they could not go into the house unless he came out first. On Thursday evening came the first breakthrough after negotiation and some more cigarettes, Isenborger left two rifles and the bayonet, along with some ammunition, on a pillar outside the house, and two gardai collected them.
It was the first ray of hope, but there were still reasons to be fearful. If his mother was dead Isenborger had lost his closest friend and might think he had nothing left to live for.
After another sleepless however, the siege quickly came to its climax. Early yesterday he agreed to surrender, and put out his weapons, and the gardai went into the house for the first time. Isenborger was crying, his mother lying dead in the bed beside him. The negotiators tried to comfort him, and he was allowed stay with them at the scene for two hours until a hearse arrived to take away his mother's body.