Gardaí believe the 24-year-old man murdered in a gangland shooting in Dublin on Saturday was targeted because of his links to the drugs trade.
Jonathan O'Reilly was shot dead as he sat in a car outside Cloverhill Prison, Clondalkin, at around 3 p.m. The driver of the car was visiting a friend in the prison, while O'Reilly and two others waited in the vehicle.
A high-powered motorbike pulled up beside the parked BMW. A man stepped from the motorbike and fired three shots into the car, hitting O'Reilly in the upper body as he sat in the passenger seat. A revolver is believed to have been used.
The attacker fled the scene on the motorbike, which was driven by an accomplice, in the direction of Coldcut Road. Both men were wearing black helmets.
O'Reilly, who had a five-year-old son, was from St Mark's Gardens, Clondalkin. He was part of a well-known west Dublin gang who have been heavily involved in drug dealing since the mid-1990s.
Many of his associates have been jailed for drugs offences and at least one was killed in a gangland attack by rival criminal elements.
In December 2001 Simon Doyle (22), who was in the same drugs gang as O'Reilly, was shot at his home at St Mark's Avenue, Clondalkin. The following April 56-year-old Maurice Ward was shot dead at his home in Ronanstown in a suspected revenge attack. Gardaí are investigating if O'Reilly's death on Saturday may be linked to the two murders.
Detectives at Ronanstown Garda station are also exploring the possibility that O'Reilly was targeted by a rival gang.
Those who carried out Saturday's attack had planned it well and clearly had information as to the movements of O'Reilly and his associates. The car had been parked at the scene for less than 10 minutes when the killer struck. The attacker singled out O'Reilly from the other two people in the car.
A team of around 40 gardaí and detectives are investigating the murder. They have already interviewed the people who were with O'Reilly at the time of the attack and the vehicle and crime scene have been technically examined.
Supt Humbert Collins of Ronanstown Garda station said gardaí are appealing for anyone who was in the area at the time, or may have information on the murder, to come forward.
"Two men on a similar looking motorcycle to that used by the attackers were seen acting suspsciously at a roundabout at the Cedarbrook housing estate around 300 yards from the scene shortly before the shooting. We're appealing for anyone who may have seen it to come forward," he said.
O'Reilly was released early from Cloverhill last year from a five-year jail term for drugs offences. However, that conviction was not the first time he had been before the courts.
In 1999 he was given an 18-month suspended sentence for an assault carried out while an associate of his, Edward Murray (25) of St Ronan's Park in Clondalkin, was arrested on drugs charges in 1999.
Murray was found with €120,000 of heroin when he was arrested on suspicion of theft in 1999. At the trial of the two men gardaí gave evidence that O'Reilly was at a christening party in a Clondalkin pub in 1996 when he threatened to break the other leg of a man on crutches.
When a customer in the bar tried to intervene he was kicked and punched to the ground and one of the men in O'Reilly's company then dropped a granite slab on the man's face.
A second customer who tried to break up the fight suffered a fractured jaw and cheek bone. When O'Reilly, who was just 16 at the time, and his three friends were later arrested they were covered in blood.
