A WOMAN has described seeing her partner shot several times in their bedroom by a gunman after they returned home from the pub.
John Berney (29) of Castlelyon Drive, Newcastle, Co Dublin, was gunned down in front of his partner Karen Mealy on March 6th, 2008.
Ms Mealy and Berney were in an upstairs bedroom when she heard someone come up the stairs.
“When I turned around he was already in the room. He didn’t say anything . . . He was holding a small handgun.
“I saw him fire the gun. I heard about three or four bangs. John just fell to the ground,” Ms Mealy told an inquest at Dublin County Coroner’s Court.
“When he was finished shooting he just turned around and ran down the stairs,” said Ms Mealy.
Berney, a convicted criminal, was shot once in the trunk and had two contact gunshot wounds to the left side of his head.
He didn’t see the gunman come in as he was bending down at a bedside locker, the inquest heard.
Ms Mealy’s two sons, aged four and one, were asleep in upstairs bedrooms at the time.
Stephen Barry, who had been baby-sitting the two boys and who was downstairs at the time of the shooting, told coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty that he didn’t hear the gunman come into the house.
The first thing he heard was three or four shots.
The gunman, who had a black scarf wrapped around his face, then came downstairs and shot Mr Barry in the neck.
The coroner told Mr Barry that he was “lucky to be alive”.
A murder investigation following the killing resulted in a number of arrests, Supt Peter O’Boyle told the inquest.
A file was forwarded to the DPP, but there was no prosecution pending in relation to the murder.
The Garda investigation remains open, the inquest was told.
A jury of four men and two women returned a verdict of death by unlawful killing under the direction of the coroner.