Man critical after armed standoff ends in shooting

A man was in a critical condition in hospital last night having shot himself in the head with a legally held firearm outside a house in south Dublin.

Gardaí had responded to reports of the incident after a house alarm was activated at an address in Farrenboley Park, Windy Arbour, Dundrum, yesterday just after lunchtime.

Armed
On arrival at the scene, gardaí approached a stationary vehicle with a man inside who was armed with a shotgun. He appeared in an agitated state and gardaí made the decision to withdraw quickly due to the potential volatility of the situation and in the interest of public safety.

Senior gardaí were dispatched to the area and the scene was assessed to try and determine if an armed reaction unit such as the Emergency Response Unit or Garda negotiators should be drafted in. However, the man shot himself in the head and lost a large amount of blood.

Garda sources said he was critically ill. Gardaí have taken away the man's car for a forensic examination and are trying to establish if other shots may have been fired inside the vehicle. However, senior gardaí said the man had not fired at members of the force and gardaí had not fired at the vehicle, as some reports yesterday suggested.

Standoff
The standoff lasted for almost three hours. One neighbour who did not give her name, said she had gone out to the shops and came home to find the street cordoned off.

“He’s a terribly nice fella,” she said. “It’s a very quiet area; it’s like a little bit of country in the city.”

Immediately gardaí arrived at the scene to check reports of the incident and the activated house alarm, emergency services quickly surrounded the road which had previously been known as the Farrenboley Cottages.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” another neighbour said.

“It’s like a siege, there are guards all around.”

Gardaí released a statement yesterday afternoon saying they were “dealing with an incident” outside the house involving a man in his 40s.

Several units of the Dublin fire brigade, paramedics and the Garda helicopter attended the scene and the man was taken away in the back of an ambulance which had backed into his driveway.

Gardaí said the incident was under investigation and the man had been taken by ambulance to St Vincent’s hospital suffering from a head injury.