Gardaí yesterday arrested a 50- year-old former soldier for questioning about the shooting dead of a 60-year-old father of five near his home in Fermoy, Co Cork, on Sunday morning.
Armed detectives arrested the man just after he left a flat on the Rathealy Road in the north Cork town at around 9am yesterday and brought him to Fermoy Garda station for questioning about the death of painting contractor and boxing coach John Mahon.
Mr Mahon was shot by a lone gunman who watched Mr McMahon get out of his girlfriend, Noreen Sexton's car at his home at St Bernard's Place and then followed him to his sister's house at St Bernard's Place, where he fatally wounded him with a shot to the head.
Gardaí issued a description of the gunman as being in his late 40s or early 50s with grey hair and said that the description matched that of a man with whom Mr Mahon had an altercation on Kent Bridge in Fermoy at around midnight on Saturday.
The Irish Times has learned that the man spoke to Mr Mahon in Irish when he confronted him on Kent Bridge and he also made some reference to the IRA, but gardaí are satisfied that there is no subversive link with Mr Mahon's murder.
Yesterday's arrest came after gardaí had mounted a surveillance operation on a man living in a flat on the Rathealy Road on the northern side of Fermoy.
They decided to move in and arrest the man early yesterday morning when it appeared the man may have been preparing to leave the town.
Detectives arrested the man under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act before they began a thorough examination of the flat where they found a single barrel shotgun carefully hidden behind a false partition in one of the rooms.
According to a source, the shotgun was illegally held and had been stolen in Co Clare about a month ago.
The weapon, along with a number of cartridges recovered at the scene of the killing, has now been sent to Dublin for examination by ballistics experts.
The arrested man is a native of Co Clare but had served in the Army in Fermoy and lived locally for a number of years but left the town about 10 years ago and went to live in Britain.
He has family in Fermoy and returned there about a month ago.
