The shooting dead of a man in Finglas, north Dublin, at the weekend is the first killing in an escalating gang feud in the suburb, with gardaí now concerned more fatal attacks will follow. The victim of Sunday morning's shooting, local man James Whelan (29), was gunned down on Deanstown Avenue just before 4.30am.
One line of investigation is that the events resulting in Mr Whelan’s death are linked to another incident over the weekend in another part of Finglas in which a house linked to the dead man was shot at. In the early hours of Sunday morning, and in an apparent revenge attack for the earlier shooting, a petrol bomb was thrown at a property on the Deanstown estate.
Mr Whelan was spotted nearby by members of the rival gang and pursued onto Deanstown Avenue and shot dead by his rivals. Gardaí suspect he was killed because his rivals believed he had just carried out the petrol bomb attack or had orchestrated it.
The main suspects for the killing are a local drugs gang led by a Finglas man in his 20s who has emerged as a senior gangland figure in recent years. That man is now a prime target for the specialist Garda units working to combat organised crime. He was at odds with Mr Whelan as he was suspected of stealing three high value watches from members of the rival gang earlier this year.
A large area outside houses on Deanstown Avenue was sealed off throughout Sunday. Gardaí with sniffer dogs were searching along Deanstown Drive, Deanstown Green and Deanstown Avenue. A number of follow-up searches were carried out at houses in Finglas on Sunday.
The emergency services were alerted to the shooting just before 4.30am on Sunday. However, while bystanders and then paramedics tried to assist Mr Whelan, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The body was removed from the scene and a postmortem examination was carried out by Chief State Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan, at the City Morgue, Whitehall.
Mr Whelan was well known to gardaí for involvement in the drugs trade in the Finglas area from the time he was a teenager. When he was still in his teens, gardaí seized almost €30,000 in cash from him. At that time, though he was still a young man, he had over 50 convictions, including for selling drugs.
In recent years Mr Whelan and his associates had become embroiled in a localised feud between rival gangs from the Finglas area, which had escalated significantly in recent months.
Three weeks ago, in response to the worsening violence, gardaí moved in and searched nine houses in Finglas. In an unusual move, some of the properties were boarded up and Dublin City Council took possession of them as gardaí believe they were being used as bases by local criminals.
That operation last month followed beatings and a number of serious attacks on houses across Finglas; including several shootings and a grenade attack. In some of the attacks the houses of innocent families were mistakenly hit.
Some of the recent violence, including a gang abducting a man in the middle of a Finglas housing estate, have been recorded by the perpetrators and footage circulated to taunt rival gang members. Gardaí believe the violence has been stoked by the fact those involved are members of rival drugs gangs but that some of the young teenagers involved have engaged in the violence for recreational reasons.
