Gardaí seek motive for killing of 'disorganised' criminal

GARDAÍ ARE trying to establish a motive for the shooting dead of a man as he walked from a pub in Coolock, Dublin on Saturday night to see his partner and child.

The victim, Noel Deans (27) had, from the age of 14, spent most of his life in child detention centres and later adult prisons. He was originally from Greenwood Lawns, Blunden Drive, Coolock.

His killing was the fourth fatal shooting in Dublin in eight days.

Deans, a drug user, had been drinking in the Priorswood Inn, Priorswood, Coolock Dublin, on Saturday evening. He left the pub just after 10pm to walk the short distance to see his partner and child at his partner’s home.

As he walked up Ferrycarrig Road towards a laneway leading to Macroom Road, he was shot dead. Local people heard gunfire and rang gardaí. When a patrol car arrived at the scene they found Deans dead on the road.

Assistant State Pathologist Dr Khaled Jaber examined the body at the scene yesterday morning before it was removed for a postmortem.

The results were not available last night but Deans had been shot at least twice in the head.

Local people reported hearing a car speeding from the scene after the shooting.

The dead man was linked to a number of criminals who have been feuding in Coolock in recent years, including JP Joyce (30), found shot dead near Dublin airport on January 9th. However, gardaí said Deans’s links to these criminals were tenuous. There is currently no information linking his death to Joyce’s murder or the Coolock feud.

Reports locally that Deans was in some way linked to the Coolock feud murder of Fred Lynch (21) in Darndale last March are being treated with scepticism by gardaí.

One Garda source said: “He was known to the gardaí but it was for disorganised crime. We wouldn’t even have regarded him as a member of a crime gang.”

Gardaí said Deans had been involved in a number of low-level rows with local criminals and was involved in one altercation as recently as two weeks ago. They are investigating if any of these disputes led to his murder.

Supt Mark Curran of Coolock Garda station said he had met community leaders yesterday and had assured them the murderers would be “vigorously pursued”.

In May 2000 Deans, then aged 18, was jailed for four years for an incident in which he used a stolen car to ram a Garda car after a chase in Coolock. He then reversed over Garda Declan Nolan, who was on foot. He had to have a steel plate put into his knee and was out of work for nine months.

Deans’s trial heard he started smoking cannabis when he was 13 years before graduating to heroin and crack cocaine.

In 2004, he was jailed for three years for stealing a 4X4 and driving it while drunk into a Garda car. Deans stole the Honda 4X4 in Malahide, north Dublin, after the owner left the keys in the ignition while in the post office.

Deans drove at speed on the wrong side of the road into an oncoming Garda car. Nobody was seriously injured but Deans was taken from the car bleeding. He was brought to Beaumont Hospital for treatment but tried to escape from Garda custody while at the hospital. He was drunk but refused to give a breath sample.

He later tried to head-butt a garda on the way to Swords Garda station.

During his trial, his barrister, Caroline Biggs, told Judge Desmond Hogan that Deans had first been jailed when he was 14. From that age until he was 21, Deans had only spent 18 months out of custody. He had 18 convictions at the time and suffered from psychiatric problems and a drug addiction.

In 1999, aged 17, he was before the courts for exposing himself twice in less than an hour to gardaí in a patrol car in Darndale, where he had lived for periods.

Coolock gardaí are being assisted in the Deans murder investigation by their colleagues from Raheny and Clontarf because of the heavy workload in Coolock.

Officers there were already investigating a stabbing murder in Donaghmede at the weekend, the shooting dead of JP Joyce and the armed abduction of a shopkeeper in Coolock last Tuesday. Anybody with information on the Deans murder is asked to contact Raheny gardaí on (01) 666 4832.