Spanish bar gunman is found guilty of murder

A MAN has been convicted of murdering Dublin plasterer John O’Neill after a petty row at a Costa del Sol bar.

A Spanish jury found Darren O’Flaherty, 42, from Liverpool, guilty after a four-day trial at a court in Malaga.

Disturbing CCTV footage played to the jury on day two of the trial showed O’Flaherty pointing a gun at a father and his cerebral palsy-sufferer son after shooting Mr O’Neill dead

O’Flaherty was also convicted of attempting to murder bar manager James Walsh and owning the unlicensed gun used in the July 28, 2010, crime at Coco’s Bar in the holiday resort of Benalmadena.

The jurors cleared O’Flaherty of the attempted murder of a second bar worker.

O’Flaherty, a father of five, was on the run from British police over a knife-point holdup when he shot Mr O’Neill, 40, dead. Before the shooting he had assaulted Mr O’Neill’s friend and is now facing a lengthy jail sentence, which is expected to be announced within the next fortnight.

O’Flaherty’s lawyer said afterwards she would appeal.

Mr O’Neill, from Coolock, north Dublin, was on his first foreign holiday with his family. His aunt Peig Dowdall described her nephew as ‘a gorgeous, big soft guy, always with a smile on his face’. She added: ‘He was just in the wrong place.’