‘Extreme hostility’ at Regency after killing

A CROWD outside Dublin’s Regency Hotel was ‘extremely hostile’ and offered no information to a garda who had arrived on the scene after a fatal shooting there, the Special Criminal Court has heard.

The shooting had happened, the court has previously heard, during a boxing weigh-in at the hotel, when a man dressed as a woman and another wearing a flat cap, armed with handguns, followed by three people dressed in tacticalstyle Garda uniforms and carrying assault rifles, raided the venue.

CCTV footage has been played of two of the men in fake Garda uniforms shooting David Byrne, 34, as he was fleeing the scene.

It is the prosecution’s case that Patrick Hutch, 25, was the man dressed as a woman and that he did not shoot Mr Byrne but was part of a ‘shared intention’ to commit the offence. Mr Hutch, of Champions Avenue, Dublin 1, is pleading not guilty to the murder of Mr Byrne at the hotel on February 5, 2016.

The court heard evidence yesterday from gardaí who arrived at the scene. Garda Finbar Fleming told the court that a group of about 20 to 30 people was gathered in a car park outside a Centra shop beside the hotel. ‘They were quite irate and upset,’ the garda said.

Earlier, Sergeant Noel Nolan told the court that he saw an injured man with ‘blood coming from his stomach’ and asked him what had happened. ‘Basically, we were told where to go,’ the sergeant said, ‘and given no information.’

The trial resumes this morning.