Yes, Keane Mulready-Woods made bad mistakes ... but he should have been allowed to turn his life around
In truth, I know very little about Keane Mulready-Woods, aside from the imprint left behind, a photo of a young man who still seemed to possess echoes of boyhood innocence, yet faced such evil in his final moments. Keane was only 17. He seemed to love the latest style, like most boys his age. This was evident by the designer clothes he wore to his death.
A photograph of the teenager, given by his family to gardai, shows a boyish face smiling subtly while holding a phone to his ear.
No doubt Keane felt a man in his designer clothes, a uniform of youth, of cool, as he walked the streets of Drogheda, Co Louth.
He could never have known this uniform would become crucial in helping the public and gardai put together his horrific final moments.
Everyone today knows Keane’s face, for he is the boy who never came home and who, we’re told, made connections in dark circles.
A terrifying gang culture, robbing parents of their children, resulted in his murder, his body parts mercilessly dumped on two consecutive nights.
Much has been reported about the nefarious activities the youth was said to have been involved in, but no one, apart from Keane’s family and friends, knows who this young man was deep down.
No doubt he made terrible errors and committed crimes, but he deserved the chance to turn his life around.
He was just 17. Keane had so much time, but his future was robbed from him in an act of monstrous savagery.
The killers have made a statement of how they now feel
all-powerful and above the law. By leaving the boy’s remains in two decent and law-abiding communities in Dublin, they have tried to threaten the security
of the families who live there. A study released last month, Building Community Resilience, found children as young as 12 were being enticed into gangs
dealing drugs and committing organised crime in Dublin’s south inner city.
The study — compiled by Johnny Connolly from the University
of Limerick — found the gangs considered children “expendable” and “plentiful”.
The report led to Jim O’Callaghan, Fianna Fail’s justice and equality spokesman, to express outrage.
One thing echoes loud and clear: the young men, women and children groomed by gangs are from deprived areas and are offered little for great risk and the ruination of their future.
As adults, we all realise that sometimes the young do not possess the foresight to see just how they are losing the light of their childhood.
These are the boys who walk a dark road, somehow believing it leads to adventure and not, in fact, despair.
There’s no doubt the children and young people involved in gangs in Dublin and Drogheda have harmed their communities and innocent people.
There’s no doubt they need to be taken to task and dealt with by a system that can punish but also offer hope and a future.
However, as law-abiding citizens, we must all stop and look at Keane’s photo, showing a teenager dressed in his designer tracksuit, and breathe in the essence of a boy who travelled the wrong path.
We must contemplate who Keane could have become.
This boy could have been someone one day — a father, a professional, a man who had seen his errors and paid to fix them.
We must also offer our condolences to his family and friends, who have lost so much and now face untold horror.
No parent, no sibling, should ever have to meet this nightmare on earth.
Those in Drogheda who have any answers as to who killed a young man in such a barbaric way must offer all information to gardai so they can carry out justice and end this reign of terror.
We can start a journey to healing by allowing ourselves outrage and letting criminal gangs know they’re not free to take children so full of promise and lead them away to their ends.
The only home left for Keane’s killers — the evil men who feed on fear — should be a long stay in a small cell.