A MAN who, with his brother and father, was allegedly the intended target of a contract killing has told a jury in the Central Criminal Court he was told to hand €100,000 to a woman he met in a local hotel to cancel the hit.
Clare woman Sharon Collins (45), Ballybeg House, Kildysart Road, Ennis and Essam Eid (52), an Egyptian man with a Las Vegas address, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill PJ, Robert and Niall Howard between August 1st 2006 and September 26th, 2006. Ms Collins also denies hiring Mr Eid to shoot the three men.
Mr Eid denies demanding €100,000 from Robert Howard to cancel the contracts.
He also denies breaking into the Howard business at Westgate Business Park in Ennis and stealing two computers, computer cables, a digital clock and a poster and handling the stolen items.
Robert Howard told prosecution counsel Tom O'Connell yesterday he received a phone call from a man who had called to a house he shared with his brother the previous night and offered him the chance to buy his family out of the contract.
Mr Howard said the man, who called himself Tony, rang him twice on September 27th, 2006, the day after he had appeared at the house.
He got the first phone call at about 12.15pm. "He asked what time are you finished work and had I started getting the money together. I just said, the usual time." He called again at about 4.45pm and suggested a meeting at the bus station to hand over the money. Mr Howard refused. They agreed to meet in the Queen's Hotel at about 5.15pm.
Mr Howard said he had been in touch with gardaí and when he arrived at the hotel gardaí knew he was there.
He received another call at about 5.40pm telling him to meet a woman in the toilets "in which she would count the money". He was advised by gardaí to go and meet the woman. She was in her late 40s or early 50s with black hair and was wearing a leather jacket. "She said 'have you got the envelope?' I said 'have you got the computer?'.
"At that stage a plainclothes Garda officer came in through the lobby and she took off."
Mr Howard identified computer cables, a clock and poster when they were shown to him and also identified a white jacket and dark baseball cap as clothes the man who called himself "Tony" had been wearing when he called to his house. He also identified a set of keys that "look like the keys to the office". The trial continues.