“Get down! Get down. There are gunmen in the lobby. They’re shooting,” screamed the woman who burst into Debbie Martin’s office as she got ready to start her shift as duty manager in the Regency Airport Hotel on Friday.
“The first thing that crossed my mind was there must be terrorists in the hotel,” Martin recalled in the quite calm of the hotel bar on Sunday afternoon. “She had bumped straight into them as they came through the reception doors.”
Seconds before, Martin had heard “little bangs” coming from the lobby but “never in my wildest dreams did I think it was gunfire,” she said. “I grew up in a rough flat complex in Dublin and I had never ever seen or heard anything like that in my life.”
The confirmation that the "little bangs" were gunfire sparked panic in the office and throughout the hotel. "We didn't know what was happening or if the gunmen were going to come through the place shooting everyone," Martin told The Irish Times.
“There were a bunch of us in the office and we were all on the ground. I called 999 and asked for the guards. I remember thinking after I hung up that I should have told them we needed an ambulance too.”
Frightened staff
Calls from frightened staff hiding throughout the hotel started coming through to the office.
“There was complete chaos. We are trained how to handle certain situations. We’d know what to do in the event of a robbery or something like that but I don’t think anyone could be prepared for gunmen shooting in the lobby,” she said.
“I knew I had to calm the staff down so I went down to reception to see what was going on myself. The guards had not arrived at that point. I could still smell the smoke in the air.”
While the smoke lingered from the gunfire, which left one man dead and two others seriously injured, those who pulled the triggers had fled. Or at least were nowhere to be seen.
“I started to wonder if they had gone up to the rooms and if they were searching the hotel looking for someone else. We didn’t know if they were still in the building. It was terrifying,” said Martin.
Crime scene
By Sunday the hotel was quiet. It was open, although access to the reception and lobby where the shooting took place remained blocked off by crime-scene tape. A temporary reception desk was set up at a secondary exit and it was business as usual as telephones rang, bookings were taken and guests came and went.
The shooting took place in a separate part of the hotel to where homeless families have been given temporary accommodation.
Martin looked down at the trainers on her feet and laughed. “My shoes are locked up behind reception so I can’t get at them - I had to wear these. This jacket isn’t mine either, that’s cordoned off too.
“I don’t think the shock has set in yet,” she said. “The shock and the fear will linger for a while but after that things should get back to normal. I hope so anyway.”
