A young uniformed garda was brutally murdered with a shot in the back as he tried to get away from a gunman at a first-floor flat in Tallaght, Co Dublin, 18 years ago, the Special Criminal Court was told yesterday.
Mr Eamonn Leahy SC, prosecuting, said that Garda Patrick Reynolds fell mortally wounded in the hallway of the local authority flats after he was shot from the first-floor landing.
He said a colleague of Garda Reynolds who witnessed the shooting later identified the gunman at a railway station in Paris as Mr Sean Hughes.
Mr Sean "Bap" Hughes (42), a father of three, of Albert Terrace, Belfast, pleaded not guilty yesterday to the capital murder of Garda Patrick Reynolds (23) at Avonbeg Gardens, Tallaght, Co Dublin, on February 20th, 1982.
The charge carries a mandatory sentence of 40 years' imprisonment, without remission.
Mr Hughes also denied the robbery of £62,100 from a bank in Askeaton, Co Limerick, on February 18th, 1982, receiving stolen cash and unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life in Tallaght on February 20th, 1982.
Opening the prosecution case, Mr Leahy said that cash was delivered to the Bank of Ireland in Askeaton on the morning of February 18th, 1982 and that half an hour later a group of armed men entered the bank.
The gunmen forced the assistant manager, Mr Thomas Kelly, to open the bank's strongroom and staff were forced in there. The gunmen then escaped with £62,100 in cash.
Less than two days later, after an anonymous phone call to Tallaght Garda Station, five unarmed gardai left the station at 1.30 a.m. and went to local authority flats at Avonbeg Gardens. Four were uniformed and one detective was in plain clothes.
The group included Garda Reynolds, who was from Co Sligo and was "an exemplary member of the gardai. He was in uniform conducting the ordinary business of uniformed gardai investigating criminal activity."
Garda Reynolds and Sgt Patrick O'Brien took up position at the rear of the flats while the three other gardai went to a firstfloor flat and forced an entrance, Mr Leahy continued.
They heard movement in the bathroom and went in. They saw three men handling a large sum of money, and some guns.
The evidence would be that this money was the proceeds of the bank robbery at Askeaton.
Gardai drew their batons and a serious struggle ensued. One man succeeded in grabbing one of the guns from the floor and two shots were fired, one of which went through the baton of Garda Thomas Quinn.
Garda Reynolds had in the meantime gone to the front of the building, he added. On hearing the two shots, Sgt O'Brien ran to the front and saw a man standing with a gun in his hand on the landing. He saw Garda Reynolds coming down the stairs and he saw two flashes and heard two shots.
"Garda Reynolds continued down the stairs until he reached the hallway, where he fell mortally wounded," Mr Leahy said. He died from shock and haemorrhage due to a shot in the back.
Sgt O'Brien then saw the gunman and another man get into a car and drive off. The accused was later identified at St Lazare railway station in Paris on November 6th, 1982 by Sgt O'Brien as the man who had shot Garda Reynolds. Fifteen years later, Mr Hughes was arrested at Swinford in Co Mayo, Mr Leahy added.
The trial continues today.