Gardaí believe one of two men who died in a gangland attack in Co Kildare last night ran for his life after being wounded but collapsed and died after climbing over a wall into the back garden of another house.
One of the victims has been named as Andy Barry (31) from Tallaght. The other dead man, who has yet to be formally identified is in his 30s and is from Eastern Europe.
Two other men – one Irish and one from Eastern Europe – were wounded but survived and their conditions were described as “not life threatening”.
Garda sources said while the investigation was at an early stage, they believe Barry was an enforcer in a drugs gang based in Dublin and Kildare and that he was the killers’ target.
The other man who was shot dead was not known for any involvement in crime in Ireland and gardaí are trying to determine if he was shot dead because he happened to be in the house with the target when the killers called. He is believed to be Polish or Romanian.
Barry, from Tallaght, west Dublin, is a 31-year-old father-of-two who was well-known to gardaí. He was very closely associated with a Dublin drug dealer who lives in Co Kildare who has long been a target of the Garda’s Criminal Assets Bureau, National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Organised Crime Unit.
Barry worked as an enforcer and debt collector for the gang leader. He had a reputation for extreme violence when collecting money owed to the gang leader by other smaller drugs gangs and drug users.
Gardaí said he had subjected a number of people in recent years to severe beatings and non-fatal knife attacks in which he stabbed and slashed people while collecting drug debts.
Gardaí are now trying to establish what recent event in his life was the motive for last night’s attack. They are trying to determine if a dispute he was embroiled in with a criminal from Tallaght, which resulted in a recent non-fatal shooting recently, is in any way linked to last night’s incident.
Gardaí believe at least two gunmen, possibly three, were behind last night’s attack and that at least two guns were used. There is also believed to have been another gang member driving a getaway car.
The shooting occurred at 10.20pm at a house on Rochford Ave, in the Rochford housing estate near the centre of Kilcock, Co Kildare.
The four men were the only people in the house at the time when the killers arrived.
There were no signs of forced entry at the property and gardaí believe the killers either let themselves in via the front door or rang the doorbell and were admitted.
The killers then appeared to open fire indiscriminately at the four men, who were all in the downstairs area of the house. One of the occupants tried to escape via the back garden.
Barry lived at the property and the other three were believed to be visitors. After the attack, the killers fled the scene in a car.
However, gardaí have no descriptions yet of the attackers and have no description of the getaway car. It is also unclear what direction the vehicle took after it left the scene.
At a press briefing this morning at Leixlip Garda station, Supt John Gilligan said it was unclear if the killers intended to attack more than one of the men.
“Whether they were expecting to find four people in the house is still under investigation,” he said. “But the people who went into the house were determined to shoot at least one person, maybe more.”
He said while an organised attack of such violence “causes unease, unrest and fear”, gardaí were determined to catch the killers and would treat with the strictest of confidence any information provided by the public.
He appealed for people to come forward who may have seen any vehicles driving through the area in the half hour before the attack or leaving the estate, a quiet settled area, afterwards.
Supt Gilligan said the getaway vehicle would have come out of the estate and have either turned right or left on the exit road parallel to the canal.
The left turn would have taken the vehicle towards the road network leading to the Dunboyne and Trim areas of Co Meath. If the car had turned right leaving the estate, it would have taken the killers back into Kilcock and towards the M4.
He said gardaí were checking CCTV from the immediate area and roads leading from it to try and identify the getaway vehicle and direction it went.
Supt Gilligan added members of the Garda Technical Bureau would examine the scene – including blood spatter and ballistics examinations – to try and determine how the attack unfolded inside the property and how many guns were used.
Gardaí are also conducting house to house inquiries in the locality and the Garda’s divisional search team is also carrying out searches in a wider area to try and find the car used by the killers. The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation is aiding local gardaí with the investigation.
The postmortems on the dead men are underway at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown. The injured men are being treated at the Mater and Tallaght hospitals.
Gardai in Leixlip can be contacted on (01) 666 7800 or on the Garda confidential line on 1800 666111.