The killing of John Ryan in Limerick on Monday evening has been met withdisgust, but little surprise, in a city that has become hardened to along-running gang feud, writes Carl O'Brien.
All the signs of a surprise attack are there. The trowel still lies on the wall where John Ryan was laying a patio for his neighbour. Sand lies scattered along the ground. Black skid-marks are visible on the tarmac.
Yet the latest murder in Limerick's long-running gang feud, which dates back almost a decade, seemed to came as no surprise to anyone.
"It's sad that it should come to this," says a neighbour, as the Garda technical bureau inspects the area just yards from his house. "I'm not so much angry as sad. There are just three, maybe four, families involved, and everyone is made to suffer."
John Ryan, the uncle of Eddie and Kieran Ryan, who were allegedly abducted last January, once estimated that his house had been attacked 30 times. He moved house and slept away from his family, fearing further attacks. Just days ago, while speaking to the Minister of State, Mr Willie O'Dea, about finding suitable accommodation, he predicted his own death.
Yet, when he was shot by two men on a motorcycle at 6.30 p.m. on Monday as he finished the patio outside a house at Canon Breen Park in Thomondgate, it jolted the community.
After a heavy Garda presence in the area in recent months, regular surveillance and some weapons seizures, some residents began to relax as it appeared the lid was being kept on a bitter feud which had threatened to spill out of control earlier in the year.
Now, with talks of reprisal attacks and reports of a further shootings and mini-riots in the Island Field part of the city, the fear has returned again.
Sitting in the cramped offices of St Mary's Aid, Cllr John Gilligan, who represents the area at the centre of the feud, is despondent.
"There is a sombre and fearful mood," he says. "People are horrified that anyone should die. Especially Johnny. In my view he was a moderating influence on the whole thing. I spoke to him on a number of occasions and he said he wanted it to end. Now people are apprehensive, they fear reprisals, they fear that others will follow."
To describe this unfolding saga of gang warfare as a simply a family feud is to simplify what is a complex and often confusing story. It is complicated by factors such as drug-dealing, domestic crime and links to dissident republicans and the emergence of new rival gangs in the city.
The source of the feud can be traced to the activities of Limerick city's main drug-dealing gang which emerged in the early 1990s.
It included Kieran Keane and Eddie Ryan who, along with members of affiliated families, built up a lucrative alliance until around five years ago, when Ryan broke out on his own.
There are differing versions as to what led to the breakdown in relations between the pair. Some say it was due to a fight between teenage girls of each family in a school playground which resulted in one getting their ear bitten and the other being mutilated with a Stanley knife. Others say it was due to the irreconcilable ambitions of Keane and Ryan in seeking to individually control the drug trade.
What is clear is that it ignited events that impacted on both families and the wider community with devastating consequences. First there were threats of violence, then there was a failed assassination on one of the men. It soon escalated to actual shootings. A car bomb was found under one man's car. A stash of high-powered machine- guns were found on another occasion. Inevitably the rise in violence began claiming lives.
Eddie Ryan (40) was shot as he was drinking in the Moose Bar following a funeral, in front of members of the family. One of the gunmen was reportedly Keane. He was shot last January.
Gardaí believe a third gang was responsible for this murder and the double kidnapping of the young Ryan brothers who were abducted. Some sources also say that this emerging gang is seeking to size control of the drug trade in the Munster area.
This gang is suspected of murdering Limerick doorman Brian Fitzpatrick and another man in Co Clare at the beginning of this year.
While this gang, based in Moyross in Limerick, have a history of violence, they have tended to remain in serious organised crime, drug dealing and burglary, according to Garda sources.
While residents in the Island Field area of the city, known locally as "the parish", wait for the next development in this bloody conflict, questions are beginning to be asked of the gardaí. The Emergency Response Unit had been drafted onto the streets following the murder of Keane and the abductions of the Ryan in January.
"There were helicopters, there were armed detectives and helicopters. It was like west Belfast during the Troubles," recalls Cllr Gilligan. He, however, accepts that it is almost impossible to stop two groups intent on killing each other over a long period of time.
While the ERU drifted quietly away, the Garda insists it has kept a heavy presence in the meantime with armed gardaí regularly patrolling the area.
Talk of Limerick living in fear, however, is an exaggeration. There are pockets of the city which are tense and fearful, such as "the parish" that encompasses the three of the most neglected housing estates. But the rest of the city is mostly oblivious. Nevertheless, the murder rate in these pockets is extraordinary. There have been almost 20 murders in the city since February 2001, compared to around 30 in Dublin which has a population around 15 times greater. Gardaí have complained they are undermanned, but there is little sign of an increase given the state of the public finances.
In the meantime, the residents of the Island Field area are waiting for the next "surprise" attack to come. As onlookers gathered at the site of the shooting they expressed the fears of a community on the edge.
"This is a close-knit place and we've never seen anything like this until recently. I'm living on my nerves," says one woman.
"People used to want to live in an area like this," says another. "It was the kind of place you could go into a house, push the door open and have a cup of tea. No one wants to live here now."