The father-in-law of a man shot in a case of mistaken identity in the feud between the Kinahan and Hutch gangs has asked those involved to think of the pain they are causing to the loved ones of those they kill.
Martin O’Rourke, from George’s Hill, Dublin 7, was shot dead on Sheriff Street in Dublin’s north inner city on April 14th. He was one of seven men murdered during the feud in the last six months.
Speaking on Tuesday, his father-in-law Larry Power said Mr O'Rourke had been an "innocent victim" who was "gunned down for nothing".
"He was a happy-go-lucky guy. He was a nice individual. Everyone that knew him liked him," Mr Power said on the Claire Byrne Live programme on RTÉ One.
He recalled arranging to meet Mr O’Rourke at Sheriff Street on the day he was killed. He had happened on the murder scene just five or 10 minutes after the fatal shooting, but did not realise at that stage that his son-in-law’s body was in the forensic tent erected by gardaí, he said.
Mr Power had been informed later that afternoon by the garda leading the investigation.
“It’s unbearable. It’s unbearable even to think about it.”
He said if the shooting had happened about 20 minutes earlier, there might have been children coming out of a nearby creche.
“There’s no regard for human life anymore,” he said. He said he believed those living in the inner city area had that feeling.
Mr Power also said Mr O’Rourke’s partner Angeline had been pregnant when he was killed and miscarried about three weeks later.
“I think that’s down to stress and shock and everything else that comes with your partner being murdered.”
Asked for his message to the people carrying out the killings, Mr Power said: “Please try and think about the distraught and the torment and upset and the suffering that you are putting into people’s lives for the rest of their lives.”
“My son-in-law wasn’t a tout. He had nothing got to do with this. He was an innocent victim and he was gunned down for nothing.”
Mr Power said the Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald had spoken about putting armed guards on the street.
“It’s too late now, isn’t it?”
He said he did not believe anything good could come out of Mr O’Rourke’s death.
“If there was any good to come out of it, why is it still happening? Why is it still happening?”
He asked that both sides in the feud stop what they were doing and consider getting a “go-between” to bring the two heads of the families together to try to sort out their differences before other innocent people were killed.
Mr Power said the person who had killed his son-in-law had to live with not one death, but two.
“He has to live with the death of my unborn grandchild and the death of my son-in-law Martin.”
‘Totally innocent’
Speaking on the same programme, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said Mr O’Rourke had been “totally innocent” but that even those criminals killed were the “sons and daughters of somebody”.
Archbishop Martin said he believed the only influence that could be imposed on those involved was from people within their own “criminal world”.
“But stopping the feud is only a truce to get back to the other evil work that they’re at; they are flooding the streets with drugs, they are making money.”
He said those involved had decided that to keep their money, financial interests and luxury interests safe they would “mow down people on the streets”.
Archbishop Martin also said he believed they would not listen to any public figure.
He said he had been told that only about 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the heroin “flooding into the country” was being intercepted.
He said the amount of heroin coming into the country was being consumed all over the country and that anyone involved in it was “co-responsible” for what was going on.
“There’s a lot of pointing at the north inner city. That’s very unfair.”
A total of 77 per cent of those in a poll of 1,000 adults carried out for the programme favoured “emergency internment” of gangland suspects to combat the current gun violence in Dublin.
Some 41 per cent said they did not have confidence in Nóirín O’Sullivan as Garda Commissioner, while 26 per cent said they did. A third of those polled said they did not know whether or not they had confidence in the commissioner.