GANGLAND GODFATHER

Shay O'Byrne was shot dead in a gun attack in Tallaght. His girlfriend suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. His murder is being linked to an ongoing bloody feud between some of Dublin's major criminal gangs based in the Crumlin and Drimnagh areas.Four people arrested over the gangland killing of a leading Dublin criminal have been released.The four - a 16-year-old girl and three men - were detained at Terenure, Tallaght and Rathfarnham garda stations. Gardai said they have been released and files are being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

John Carroll, a 33-year-old father of three, was gunned down as he sat drinking in a pub in the city centre on Wednesday night.The killing was the sixth fatal gangland-style shooting of the year The victim of Wednesday’s attack had been living at addresses in Kilbarrack and Baldoyle in recent times, but was originally from Charlemont Street in the south inner city. He was drinking with a number of friends in Grumpy Jack’s pub in the Coombe, Dublin, shortly after 9.30pm when two men pulled up outside the premises on a blue motorbike.The pillion passenger got off the bike and went into the pub. He singled out his victim and discharged a number of shots from a handgun. The victim tried to run but was hit six times in the stomach, hip, buttocks and arm.The gunman escaped the scene on the waiting motorbike. Both the gunman and his accomplice wore helmets with dark visors pulled down throughout the attack.Carroll, who worked as a car salesman, was taken by ambulance to St James’s Hospital, w...

Sean Cloherty (27), known to gardai as a drug dealer, was targeted in his home on Ashcroft Grove, off the Blakestown Road in Mulhuddart. There was no sign of a struggle or forced entry. The victim, originally from Champions Avenue in the city centre, had been shot up to six times in the head, neck and chest. Cloherty was known to city centre detectives for dealing cocaine, particularly in the Temple Bar area. He was targeted by officers in the South Central Division and was arrested and taken to Pearse Street station during the summer. He had convictions for drugs, abusive behaviour and traffic offences. “Gardai have come across this man before and know his track record. He was associated with some of the big heads on the Blanchardstown scene,” said a source. A neighbour noted that Mr Cloherty, his partner and two children had only been living in the area for a short period. The body was found slumped on a couch in the living room, and it is believed the killer calmly walked out of the...

Wayne Dundon, the Dundon gang leader, was seeking 'retribution' over his own conviction. Gardai are also aware that a €50,000 'contract' is in existence for the murder of one witness. Garda sources said this weekend that there is no end in sight for the gangland war between the Dundon gang, their allies and their rivals, known as the Keane-Collopy faction. The head of the latter gang is due to be released next year after serving seven years of a ten-year sentence for possessing drugs in 2001. Yesterday a man was shot and seriously injured in north Dublin. The shooting happened at 11.55am outside a bookmaker's on Cardiffsbridge Road in Finglas. The victim, 41, was last night in a stable condition in hospital. It is believed he was shot up to three times by a gunman who escaped on foot.

‘Dublin now resembles Chicago in the Roaring Twenties, when the gangsters were out of control,’ he said. ‘There is no joined-up strategy to fight these gangs, either at a national or international level. All of our drugs are imported, mostly by sea along Ireland’s coastline, yet we have no proper network with our fellow Europeans to patrol the seaboard. We don’t have enough boats, planes or helicopters to intercept the smuggling networks,’ he said.Gangland wars have turned Dublin into the Chicago of the 21st century, a TD and chairman of a drugs task force in the Irish capital said last night.Labour TD Joe Costello also revealed that a preliminary study by the Inner City Drugs Task Force has found that a majority of drug dealers arrested on serious offences were out on bail.Costello made his remarks following two more gangland-related murders in north Dublin this weekend. Gardai have launched a murder investigation following the fatal shooting of a 33-year-old man in Finglas early yest...