Detectives in Belfast have arrested a fifth man for questioning about the murder of Dublin gangland criminal Robbie Lawlor in the city’s Ardoyne area last weekend.
The 36-year-old suspect was arrested in Strathroy Park on Tuesday and remained in custody on Wednesday evening.
Three other suspects linked to the McCarthy-Dundon gang in Limerick, who travelled to Belfast with Lawlor on Saturday to enforce a drugs debt, were arrested after the murder but have since been released. One of those suspects is aged 17 and the others are 30 and 33.
Another man, aged 27, who is from the North and has links to dissident republicanism, was arrested in Crumlin, Co Antrim, on Sunday for questioning but has also been released.
Lawlor was shot outside a house on Etna Drive on Saturday morning in a well-planned attack that appears to have been carried out by criminals with knowledge of the Ardoyne area.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has carried out a searches at a number of properties as part of the murder investigation. Detectives are trying to establish if Lawlor was shot by criminals from Belfast over drug-related matters or if his killing may be linked to the Drogheda feud, which he was heavily involved in.
Abducted
Lawlor, who was from north Dublin but had lived in Laytown, Co Meath, for a period, was a suspect for the most recent killing in the feud, that of Keane Mulready Woods in January. The 17-year-old was abducted and murdered in Drogheda before being dismembered. His remains were found in different locations in north Dublin in the days following his disappearance.
Lawlor was suspected of involvement in a number of other shootings, some of them fatal, linked to the Drogheda and Dublin organised crime scenes. He had been warned his life was in danger from the Drogheda faction that shot dead his brother-in-law Richard Carberry last November.
Lawlor’s life was also at risk due to another dispute he was involved in with a gangland criminal from north Dublin, who is effectively aligned to one of the feuding gangs in Drogheda.
Gardaí are trying to establish if €50,000 seized in Co Laois on Monday was linked to the murder, but a link has not yet been confirmed.
