Grieving widow recalls husband's final moments

The widow of a 24-year-old man who was shot dead in a gangland-style double murder in Dublin at the weekend told yesterday how she was "laughing and joking" with her husband moments before his death.

Gardaí believe Edward Ward, from Clondalkin, was an innocent victim in the attack in which both he and Brian Downes (40), were shot dead in Walkinstown on Friday night last.

They are satisfied that Mr Downes was the intended target.

Mr Ward's widow, Jodie, with whom he had two daughters aged four and six months, recalled how the shootings happened as she waited for her husband to finish a meeting with Mr Downes, at the home of Mr Downes's mother.

In an emotional interview with RTÉ, she said she was sitting on a wall chatting to her husband while he waited to speak to Mr Downes.

"My husband kissed me. Brian came back. He was talking for a while. His [ Mr Downes's] kids was in the house, I could see them. I asked them their names and their ages and they told me.

"We were laughing and joking. I got cold and I said to my husband, 'I'll wait in the car', because we were about an hour there, and he said 'okay'. I said hurry up. 'I'll be out in a minute', he said.

"So I went out to the car. I rang my sister-in-law, who had just had a baby, and I put on the radio, and I was talking to her for about three minutes.

"I lit up a cigarette and I put on the radio and I waited, and I seen shadows from behind the car. I thought it was my husband and Brian coming. So I looked, I saw he was coming.

"And then I looked and he was gone. I saw he was gone back into the yard again so I texted his phone 'Edward, are you going now'? And I could hear noises shortly after that. They were like, kind of, fireworks going off. They went on for a while.

"The next I knew, Brian's mother came out to me. She was all blood, and she said . . . 'my son's been shot'.

"And I went in and saw Brian lying there slantway, in there [ in] bushes. I looked around and I said 'Edward, Brian's been shot'. And I looked down at my husband and I didn't even see anything and I didn't hear anything and I was in the car.

"I didn't see anything and my husband was killed and I checked him. I went down to him and I checked him to see if he was alive . . . I shook him and I seen Brian's little boy was running out to him, to Brian checking him.

"There was all blood over Brian, I couldn't see any blood on Edward. I thought maybe he was knocked out and I shook him, and I knew he was dead.

"I runs out, and someone was shouting for me to ring 999 and I couldn't even remember to ring 999 so I flicked my phone to the first number that was on my phone. That would have been the phone I was using to talk to my sister-in-law, and my brother-in- law answered the phone and I told him, and I tried to get back in and the ambulance crew wouldn't let me back in.

"They put me in a car, and then I seen the ambulance crew coming."

Mrs Ward said she was taken to the wrong hospital and only discovered 40 minutes after arriving at Tallaght hospital that her husband had actually been taken to St James's Hospital.

The Ward family has offered a reward, of an undisclosed amount, for information relating to his death.

Laurence Ward said his brother had had business dealings with Mr Downes, but was not in any way connected to a criminal fraternity.

"He just went over to see Mr Downes at his place. He was selling him some vehicles I presume, or he was telling him about some vehicles or they were dealing back and forth in vehicles.

"He wasn't an associate whatsoever. He did his own thing. He paid his taxes, he was a registered motor dealer," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme.

Mr Ward was originally from Tuam, Co Galway, and had been married to Jodie for seven years. Today is the fourth birthday of their elder daughter, Jessica.