GANGLAND GODFATHER

  GUNMEN used an AK47 assault rifle to shoot notorious gangster 'The Panda' in Dublin, gardai believe. Michael 'Micka' Kelly was gunned down in a hail of bullets in Marrsfield, Clongriffin, last Thursday afternoon. He was hit up to six times by bullets from a rifle and handgun -- and reports today said one of the gunman used a Kalashnikov, the rifle favoured by IRA dissidents, to kill him. The Russian-designed assault rifle is the most widely used in the world, carried by everyone from Osama bin Laden to Mexican drug gangs. The gun can be bought for as little as €300 in eastern Europe, according to Europol, the European police organisation. Gardai have seized a number of the weapons over the past few months and last year recovered two of the deadly 7.62mm automatic weapons, which fire at a rate of 600 rounds per minutes, in counties Wicklow and Kildare. The rifle's 30 shot magazine can be emptied in just a couple of seconds when fired on full automatic. Two g...

  Two brazen, targeted shootings of known British Columbia gangsters in less than a month may be the kindling that sparks renewed gang warfare in the Lower Mainland, say police. The officer who heads the province's gangs task force issued an "unusual" alert Tuesday to anyone with links to two notorious crime families after a known gangster was shot and wounded last week in Surrey, B.C. Supt. Tom McCluskie told reporters both that incident and the high-profile slaying of Red Scorpions' gang boss Jonathan Bacon in August amount to a high expectation by his 80 investigators that more attacks are on the way. "We're anticipating retaliatory violence, yes," he said at a news conference held at an office of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit in Delta, B.C. "I'm not trying to instill fear in the citizens, but certainly there's enough tension in there that we're concerned there will be a retaliation, that there will be further viole...

  Gang violence moved from West Bay to George Town on Monday night when teenager Jason Christian became the fourth fatal shooting victim of the week.  A second victim, 22-year-old Keith Montique, was also shot but survived.  Police Chief Superintendent John Jones described how a police patrol officer had been answering an unrelated incident around 9.30pm Monday in Birchwood Drive, off Crewe Road, when an obviously injured Mr. Montique staggered up to the police car and opened the door, saying he had just been shot.  As the officer was transporting the gunshot victim, who had been shot four times, to the Cayman Islands Hospital, the wounded man told him his friend had also been shot and was still in nearby Cranbrook Drive.  When police went to Cranbrook Drive, they found 18-year-old Jason Christian in the driver’s seat of a white Toyota LiteAce van. He had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Jones said he was “barely alive” when police...

  Suspected drug traffickers dumped 35 bodies at rush hour beneath a busy overpass in the heart of a major Gulf coast city as gunmen pointed weapons at frightened drivers. Mexican authorities said Wednesday they are examining surveillance video for clues to who committed the crime. Horrified motorists grabbed cell phones and sent Twitter messages warning others to avoid the area near the biggest shopping mall in Boca del Rio, part of the metropolitan area of Veracruz city. The gruesome gesture marked a sharp escalation in cartel violence in Veracruz state, which sits on an important route for drugs and Central American migrants heading north. The Zetas drug cartel has been battling other gangs for control of the state. Prosecutors said it's too soon to draw conclusions from the surveillance video. "We're not going to confirm or deny anything," Veracruz state Attorney General Reynaldo Escobar Perez told the Televisa network Wednesday. "We're looking at i...

  A boy left for dead after being shot several times in South San Francisco Sunday night has been identified as Joseph Maharaj, 14, according to the Coroner’s Office. While police have yet to determine whether the fatal shooting of the boy was gang-related, residents who live near where he was found in the street with another 14-year-old shooting victim suspect that it was. The fatal shooting was the first homicide in South San Francisco this year but last year the city suffered a spate of gang-related murders that shook the city, including a triple homicide Dec. 22. Sunday night’s shooting happened just before 9 p.m. and when police arrived they found two gunshot victims, both 14, and another teen, 15, on the 600 block of First Lane between Magnolia and Orange avenues. The teens were treated at the scene and transported to a hospital where one of them was later pronounced dead. The other 14-year-old was shot at least four times but is expected to survive. The third vic...

  The man who bludgeoned Carl Williams to death has claimed the gangland boss offered him $200,000 to kill former Victorian detective Paul Dale. Barwon Prison inmate Matthew Johnson has taken the witness stand for the first time and has told the court Williams talked about murdering people like others talked about football. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Williams on the grounds of self defence. Johnson bludgeoned Williams to death with the stem of an exercise bike in their maximum-security prison last year. He said his relationship with Williams soured in the months before his death, but has denied having any problem with Williams helping police. The 38-year-old told the court Williams treated him badly and had to be the boss, even asking him on one occasion to murder Dale. He said Williams boasted of having 15 murders to his name. Johnson told the court Williams knew how to "push his buttons". He said there were "many times" when he would have loved to ...

   The feared criminal - who is the son of slain mobster Kieran Keane - confronted the rival gang members following a night out in Limerick city centre. A source claimed Keane believed the car contained gangsters who knew Darren Coughlan, the innocent man he helped kick to death in November 2005. Earlier this month, gangster Joe (23) was released from prison after serving six years for Darren's manslaughter. Gardai claim Keane's release has seriously raised tensions in Limerick's criminal underworld. The notorious thug had previously vowed to get revenge on rival gang members who were behind the murder of his father, Kieran Keane snr. A source claims Keane clashed with Moyross crime figure Erol Ibrahim last week after he boxed in a car he was a passenger in. Tense Ibrahim is well known to gardai and is a close associate of senior members of the McCarthy-Dundon mob. The source said: "Keane blocked in the car because he thought it contained an associate of Darren ...