A member of the Garda Emergency Response Unit told how he was shot and wounded during a dawn raid on a Dublin apartment, a murder trial jury in the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.
Det Garda Fearghall Patwell, of the Special Detective Unit at Harcourt Square, told the court how he was shot after forcing his way through a barricaded door.
Mr David Thomas (34), of Cloonlara Crescent, Finglas, has denied the murder of Mr Eamon O'Reilly (23), of Sandyhill Gardens, Ballymun, in a Finglas pub on January 11th, 1998. Mr Thomas has also denied seven other counts of possession of firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury, and of assaulting two gardai.
In evidence, Det Garda Patwell said he was part of a team of ERU members and detectives at the door leading into the apartment in North Brunswick Street. A number of other gardai were in the stairwell and grounds surrounding the apartment. He had forced open the door to the apartment when he "saw a flash and felt a punch in the shoulder and extreme burning", he said.
"I fell to the ground. I realised I had been shot. I raised my gun to protect myself from a second shot. I lay on my back and I tried to scramble out. I was afraid it was going to happen a second time. Then I heard a second bang. At that stage I remember being caught from behind by Detectives Gantly and Mulligan, and they pulled me into the hall."
Despite surgery and five days in hospital, only 10 to 20 pellets had been removed from his right shoulder, and approximately 100 pellets still remained there, the court was told.
A second garda, Det Insp John Gantly, then of the Special Detective Unit in Harcourt Square, suffered minor injuries from the first gunshot, as some pellets ricocheted into his face.
The accused man and several other male members of his family were later arrested and several weapons were found inside the apartment, including a sawn-off shotgun, a number of cartridges and several knives of different shapes, the court heard.
Det Insp John Mulligan, of Blanchardstown Garda station, told the court that he did not believe the shotgun and knives found in the apartment were intended for use against gardai. The Thomas family were "decent hardworking people" who were not "career criminals".
Several male members of the Thomas family had been in hiding at the apartment and the women and children of the family had been sent to England for their safety, fearing attacks from the family of the deceased man, he said. On arrival at the apartment shortly before 6 a.m. on January 15th 1998, Det Insp Mulligan shouted out: "Armed gardai, open up." He shouted this a number of times. "I have no doubt we were heard, that people realised somebody was calling out. I believe that the accused and the occupants in the flat felt they were in danger from the O'Reilly faction and had weapons for those and not against An Garda Siochana."
Previously the court heard that on January 11th 1998 a fight broke out between the O'Reilly and Thomas families in a Finglas pub, which culminated in Mr O'Reilly being shot dead.
On January 15th, 1998, several days after the death of Mr O'Reilly, Det Sgt Tony Sourke, then of Cabra Garda station, issued a warrant to search one of the Richmond Apartments in North Brunswick Street, where gardai believed Mr Thomas and his family were hiding.
It was while members of the ERU and other gardai were attempting to gain entry on that occasion that the two ERU members were shot and wounded.
Reading from a statement the accused man made to gardai at Lucan station shortly after his arrest, Det Garda David Lynch said that Mr Thomas admitted shooting Mr O'Reilly dead after the deceased man "went for him" with an iron bar.
The statement said that a pub brawl erupted, in which the parents of the accused man were being seriously assaulted, and he had turned up with the sawn-off shotgun. "I saw me Da, Ritchie, getting beat with stools . . . and Eamon O'Reilly had me Ma, punching her, kicking her. They were firing pool balls all over the place. Eamon O'Reilly let me Ma go when he seen me. He had a go for me with an iron bar. When he made a move for me, that's when I shot him."
The State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, said that the deceased man was shot with a shotgun at close range. He gave the cause of death as a right haemothorax, which is an accumulation of blood in the right lung.
The trial, before Mr Justice Butler and a jury, continues on Monday.