The man killed in a shooting at a house in Finglas, north Dublin on Saturday evening has been named as Brandon Ledwidge (23).
Gardaí and emergency services personnel were called to the scene at a residence on Barry Drive shortly before 7pm. Mr Ledwidge was shot outside the house.
He was treated by emergency personnel at the scene and taken by ambulance to Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown. He was pronounced dead a short time later.
Gardaí believe the killing was planned and that the victim, known to gardaí, was the intended target. The dead man is linked to a drugs gang in the Finglas area, and gardaí are investigating the murder as a drugs-related killing. However, they added the investigation was still in its early stages.
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The scene of the murder was immediately sealed off when gardaí arrived and was being examined by the Garda Technical Bureau on Sunday. The murder investigation is being carried out by gardaí in Finglas, with door-to-door inquiries starting on Saturday as gardaí tried to gather information about the killing and how the gunman got to and from the scene.
It is understood Mr Ledwidge was shot several times with a handgun as he opened the front door to his attackers. The attackers then escaped in a car, nearly colliding with several other vehicles in the process.
Finglas has been the scene of gang feuding among a younger generation of criminals in recent years. However, this year there had been no gangland killings nationally until the murder on Saturday evening.
The gangland murder rate has in recent years been at its lowest level in the Republic since the 1980s. Garda believe gangland feuding has dissipated because of the significant success of its operations against the Liam Byrne-organised crime group, which was effectively the Kinahan cartel’s operation in Ireland, and the Hutch group, in the years after the Kinahan-Hutch feud erupted in 2015.
Sources said the success of that operation had deterred other gangs from gun feuding, adding some of the criminals linked to the Kinahan cartel were hired killers who had now been taken out of circulation after being imprisoned for feud-related violence.
