GARDAÍ ARE trying to establish if the shooting dead of two men and the wounding of two others in a quiet housing estate is linked to the gangland activities of one of the dead men or to a personalised feud in which he was involved.
The Irish man killed in the attack in Kilcock, Co Kildare, has been named locally as Andy Barry (31), a father of two originally from Tallaght, west Dublin.
While three other people were shot by the gunmen at a house on Rochford Avenue on the Rochford housing estate near the centre of Kilcock village, gardaí believe Barry was the target.
The other person shot dead was a man (25) from eastern Europe. He is believed to have been Latvian or Lithuanian. He has not been named yet.
He was wounded in the downstairs of the house and tried to run to safety out the back door. He managed to scale the wall and get into a neighbour’s back garden but collapsed there.
The two men who were wounded – one Irish and one eastern European – are aged 38 and 31 years.
They are being treated in hospital and their injuries are said to be not life-threatening. While they have spoken to gardaí about the attack, they were not well enough to be interviewed at length.
Gardaí were alerted by an emergency call at 10.20pm on Tuesday that there had been a shooting at the private residence. When they arrived at the scene they found Barry in the downstairs of the house and the two injured men close to him.
Gardaí found the eastern European man dying in the neighbour’s back garden.
All four men were taken to Tallaght, Connolly and the Mater hospitals, and two of them were pronounced dead on arrival.
Gardaí believe Barry was an enforcer in a drugs gang based in Dublin and Kildare.
The other man who was shot dead was not known for any involvement in crime in Ireland and may have been shot because he was at the house when the killers called.
Barry was very closely associated with a Dublin drug dealer who lives in Co Kildare, who has long been a target of the Criminal Assets Bureau, the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Organised Crime Unit.
Barry worked as an enforcer and debt collector for this gang leader.
Gardaí said he had subjected a number of people in recent years to severe beatings and non-fatal knife attacks in which he stabbed and slashed people while collecting drug debts.
Gardaí, who are trying to establish a motive for his murder, are seeking to determine if a dispute in which he was embroiled with a criminal from Tallaght, which resulted in a number of recent non-fatal shootings, is linked to Tuesday night’s attack.
The four men shot in Kilcock were the only people in the house when the killers arrived.
There were no signs of forced entry at the property and gardaí believe the killers either let themselves in via the front door or rang the doorbell and were admitted.
The killers, two men armed with a shotgun and pistol, then appeared to open fire indiscriminately at their victims. Barry lived at the property and the other three were believed to be visitors.
After the attack, the killers fled the scene in a car driven by another man. It is not clear what direction the vehicle took.
At a press briefing at Leixlip Garda station, Garda Supt John Gilligan said it was unclear if the killers intended to attack more than one of the men.
“Whether they were expecting to find four people in the house is still under investigation,” he said, “but the people who went into the house were determined to shoot at least one person, maybe more.”
He said while an organised attack of such violence “causes unease, unrest and fear”, gardaí were determined to catch the killers and would treat with the strictest of confidence any information provided by the public.
They are particularly keen to receive information on the direction that the getaway vehicle took after it left the Rochford estate.
Gardaí in Leixlip can be contacted on 01-6667800 or on the Garda confidential line on 1800-666111.