The manner of the shooting dead of David Byrne, and the motive for the violence that claimed his life in the Regency Hotel in Dublin, make his death one of the most significant events in gangland crime since the murder of Veronica Guerin almost two decades ago.
The latest murder, at a public event attended by children and where cameras were recording the sporting proceedings and gardaí were patrolling outside, confirms that a simmering gun feud between two of the biggest factions in Irish organised crime has erupted.
To understand the significance of the shocking events of yesterday afternoon at a boxing weigh-in in the Regency Hotel on the Swords Road in north Dublin, one must examine closely the killing of an Irish criminal in Spain last September.
From Dublin’s north inner city, Gary Hutch was 34 years old when he was gunned down beside the pool at an apartment block, Angel de Miraflores, near Marbella, on the Costa del Sol.
He was an armed robber and drug dealer, and he was the nephew of the Dublin criminal Gerry Hutch, known as the Monk.
Gary Hutch was once a member of a major Irish-led drugs wholesale gang based around Marbella. It sources drugs in South America in vast quantities and supplies the Irish and UK markets.
Dispute
However, Hutch had been in dispute with the gang and when a botched effort was made to shoot him in Spain in August 2014, his former associates were the chief suspects.
On that occasion well-known boxer Jamie Moore was shot and wounded by the attackers intending to kill Hutch.
Hutch fled Spain for a period after the gun attack, spending time back in Dublin as well as in the UK and Amsterdam.
However, while he believed it was safe to return to Spain last year, he was proven wrong. The same Irish gang that once counted him as a member is believed to have gunned him down.
The gang had previously shot dead its own – or at least people with whom it had worked.
Hutch was on the scene when close associate and multiple murder suspect Paddy Doyle (27), from Portland Place, Dublin, was shot dead near Marbella in February 2008.
Shot dead
And when major gangland figure Eamonn Dunne was shot dead while drinking in a pub in Dublin in April 2010, the Irish-led gang in Spain were immediately suspected.
It is believed it had decided to kill him because Dunne had ordered the murder of so many drug dealers in Dublin that the resultant revenge attacks were destabilising the drugs market into which the Spanish-based gang was selling.
However, Hutch was deeply embedded in a large network of criminality in Dublin.
For that reason his murder represented a crossing of a line of “no return” by the Irish wholesalers in Spain.
And when a number of men closely linked to the gang in Spain gathered at the event in the Regency Hotel yesterday, their predictable presence made it a target for those intent on avenging Hutch’s murder.
The leadership of the gang that was attacked yesterday is in Spain, meaning it is largely, though not completely, insulated from attack.
But with huge sums of money to pay for contract killings in Dublin, and with Irish members who flit back and forward, further bloodshed appears practically guaranteed.
