GARDAÍ INVESTIGATING the fatal shooting of a 66-year-old man at his home in Co Wicklow believe it may have been linked to a dispute over a family burial.
Walter Tomkins (66), a well-known and liked farmer whose family’s land was at Cronelea about two miles outside Shillelagh, was shot dead at about 6.30pm on Thursday.
A well-respected member of the Church of Ireland community, he was remembered by locals yesterday as a caring and considerate son to his elderly mother Isabella.
When she became infirm in recent years, Mr Tomkins used to bring her dinner home from the Park View House pub, returning there with the plates the next day, locals said. They added they could not recall him ever taking an alcoholic drink.
Mr Tomkins’s mother died at the age of 93 and was buried earlier this week.
After his mother’s death, Mr Tomkins continued his habit of going to the pub for his food and it was on his return from one such trip on Thursday that he was shot dead at his home. Gardaí subsequently arrested a man who was yesterday being interviewed at Baltinglass Garda station. No one else was being sought in relation to the incident, gardaí said. A postmortem was scheduled for Naas hospital
Ms Tomkins was buried on Monday in the churchyard of St Michael’s, at Aghold, near Cronelea.
Gardaí are investigating reports that a dispute subsequently arose between the victim and another man.
The picturesque village of Shillelagh, with its granite estate cottages facing a riverside park, awoke yesterday morning to the presence of satellite television vans and the news of a murder investigation.
Local hairdresser Linda Avbara said the village was shocked by the killing. “It just isn’t what you would expect around here,” she said.
Across the road at the Top service station, locals stopped to discuss what had happened, commenting that Mr Tomkins had been well known through his agricultural contracting work, and his interest in veteran and vintage tractors.
Locals said Mr Tomkins lived with his brother Cecil, also a bachelor, at Cronelea with their late mother, while a third brother, Charles, also in his 60s, lived nearby with his wife, Ivy.
Colm Dempsey said he had known Walter Tomkins and his family to see around the village all his life, but had not known them very well. “I would see him about in the village; he had two brothers and their mother has just died. They were sheep farmers,” he said, adding the community was stunned by the killing.
In the Park View House, locals following events on the lunchtime news expressed astonishment that such a thing had happened, particularly to someone who “only yesterday came in here for his dinner”.
The Rev Andrew Orr, who officiated at Ms Tomkins’s funeral on Monday, was away on annual holidays yesterday. His locum Canon Mervyn McCullough said the killing had deeply shocked the community. Locals had been talking about the World Cup and Wimbledon, but now, he said, the killing of Mr Tomkins was “all anybody is thinking about”.