A FORMER Army Corporal told a court yesterday of the last moments of an Army private who died in a shoot-out with the kidnappers of supermarket executive Don Tidey almost 25 years ago.
Members of the late Pte Patrick Kelly’s family were in the public gallery at the Special Criminal Court to hear the evidence.
Cpl Patrick Shine, who is now retired, said that he heard gunfire and saw Pte Patrick Kelly fall backwards against the trees with blood on his neck.
Cpl Shine said that he was a yard away from Pte Kelly on his left and he dived for cover and he heard Pte Kelly calling: “Paddy.” He then heard a loud explosion which sounded like a hand grenade and he put his hands over his head. A gunman then appeared with his rifle pointed at him and told him to drop his own rifle. “I thought the people were desperate enough to get out that they would have shot me as well,” he said.
The court heard that gardaí found three rifles, a Steyr submachinegun and parts of a Soviet-made fragmentation grenade in the wood but never recovered the weapons fired at Pte Kelly and recruit Gda Gary Sheehan.
Cpl Shine said that the gunman put a gun to the back of his head and told him to tell his colleagues not to shoot. He said that he had his hands up and was shouting: “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” The gunman pushed him and told him to run and at one stage he pointed a gun at his face and told him to help him get over a fence. Cpl Shine said he pulled the gunman over the fence.
Retired Det Sgt Patrick Ennis said that he was involved over an eight-day period in the examination of the scene at Derrada Wood, Co Leitrim, where Mr Tidey was rescued in December 1983. He examined three rifles, a submachine gun and spent cartridges which were found in the wood. He said that some of the spent cartridges came from a Heckler and Koch automatic weapon and some from an AK47 style assault rifle, neither of which were Irish Army issue weapons. Neither weapon was recovered by gardaí, he said.
Det Sgt Ennis said he came to the conclusion that the Heckler and Koch and AK47 weapons were fired from between the makeshift tent used by the kidnap gang and where the bodies of Pte Kelly and recruit Gda Sheehan were located and in their direction.
He said when he went to the wood on December 17th, 1983 he saw a body which was identified to him as that of Pte Patrick Kelly. “He was in a sitting position with his back resting against some saplings. He was in uniform and was facing into a dense area of the wood. His beret lay on the ground beside him. I saw a rifle some distance away,” he said.
Sgt Ennis said that approximately 12ft away he saw the body of recruit Gda Sheehan which lay on its side with his Garda cap on the ground beside him.
He was giving evidence at the trial of Maze prison escapee Brendan “Bik” McFarlane (56), of Jamaica Street, Belfast, who was arrested outside Dundalk and charged in January 1998. He has pleaded not guilty to falsely imprisoning Mr Tidey, and to possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and for an unlawful purpose at Derrada Wood, between November 25th and December 16th, 1983.The trial continues.