A MAN begged a gunman not to kill him as he opened fire on the taxi he was sitting in, early yesterday morning.
The victim was one of two passengers in the taxi which had just pulled up outside its destination, a house in Dundalk where it is believed the gunman had been lying in wait.
The other passenger was a young woman who was in the front seat.
The gunman was armed with a shotgun and opened fire on the taxi, fatally injuring a 35-year-old man. The deceased was named locally as James Hughes from Crossmaglen, Co Armagh.
Gardaí do not believe there is any link to gangland crime, drugs or subversives.
It is understood the woman had previously been in a long-term relationship with the gunman.
As the taxi pulled up, just before 4am yesterday, it was approached by the armed man who fired a number of times into the vehicle, a Fiat Scudo, shattering its windows and waking neighbours.
Both the woman and the taxi-driver were also struck by pellets from the shotgun and were taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda; their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
Family members of Mr Hughes were too distraught to speak at the scene of the shooting which was at Cluain Ard, Lis na Dara, a housing estate on the outskirts of Dundalk.
Neighbours were deeply shocked at the violence on their doorstep. One man, who did not want to be identified, said that he had heard the man plead for his life.
“I was literally in the house about two minutes and heard what I thought was fireworks. There was a pause and then a bit of screaming and the guy shouting ‘please don’t kill me’ and then there was another shot. So it wasn’t fireworks,” he said.
His wife had seen some of what took place and was, he said, “in bits”. Another neighbour said she and her mother had heard three shots. Her mother had woken her after she heard the first few shots and she said, “I saw the man with the gun, running away, he hit the car three times, the glass broke [in the taxi].”
She heard the woman in the taxi calling to the gunman, “she knew who the man was, she was in shock”. The neighbour said, “it was a big massive black gun, not a small one”.
It later emerged that a 32-year-old man had driven to Carrickmacross Garda station where he was arrested. He remained in custody last night.
The taxi ended up stopping on a small piece of grass at the end of the road.
The remains of the deceased were taken from the taxi yesterday morning and removed to Tallaght hospital where a postmortem was carried out.
Dundalk town councillor, Maria Doyle (FG) who lives around the corner said she was shocked. “You would hardly hear a car go past, it’s a very quiet estate.”