They killed an innocent man simply because he was photographed at his neighbour’s funeral
Says partner of Kirwan who was shot by Kinahans
THE partner of an innocent man who was shot dead by the Kinahan crime organisation has said that her ‘soulmate had his life extinguished’ because he was photographed walking to the funeral of life-long neighbour, Eddie Hutch.
Bernadette Roe also told the court of how she was in the car beside her partner Noel Kirwan when he was shot dead outside their home.
Ms Roe said that she still feels terrified at any bang or crash she hears and often rubs the area of her head where Mr Kirwan ‘banged off’ her when one of the shots hit his body.
Mr Kirwan’s daughter Donna told senior cartel member Declan Brady and his co-defendants that if they had the intelligence to do their ‘homework’, they would have realised that her father was an innocent man.
Gardaí have said repeatedly that Noel Kirwan was not involved in criminality in any way. It is understood he was targeted by the Kinahans due to the false belief that he might be linked to the Hutch organisation. Eddie Hutch was a brother of Gerard ‘The Monk’ Hutch.
Gerard Hutch was acquitted last year of the murder of a senior Kinahan cartel member at the Regency Hotel in 2016.
Brady is already serving 11 and a half years in prison, after he admitted supervising a firearms arsenal, as well as a sentence of seven years and three months for laundering hundreds of thousands of euro in crime cash. At a sentencing hearing yesterday, the Special Criminal Court heard details of Declan ‘Mr Nobody’ Brady’s involvement in facilitating Mr Kirwan’s murder.
The court heard that Brady and another man were linked to a tracking device that was attached to Mr Kirwan’s car to monitor his movements up to the time when he was shot dead.
Detective Superintendent Mark O’Neill told prosecution counsel Dominic McGinn SC that Brady and another man were seen on CCTV entering and leaving the Beacon South Quarter apartment complex in Sandyford in Dublin where a computer was being used to communicate with the tracking device.
The device was initially attached to a BMW that Mr Kirwan owned but then sold a short time before the shooting. Brady was caught on CCTV in the vicinity of the car dealership at the time when the tracking device was removed from that BMW to be placed a short time later on Mr Kirwan’s new car, a Ford Mondeo. Mr Kirwan was in the driver seat of that Ford Mondeo when he was shot six times on December 22, 2016 at St Ronan’s Drive, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.
Following Mr Kirwan’s murder, gardaí entered the apartment at Beacon South Quarter and found the laptop used to communicate with the tracker and an instruction manual linked to the device by a unique serial number. A toothbrush was taken from the apartment and analysis revealed DNA matching Brady.
Under cross-examination, Det Supt O’Neill agreed with defence counsel Michael O’Higgins SC that Brady’s DNA was not found on the laptop. He said gardaí are not in a position to say who was using the laptop to communicate with the tracker and there is ‘no evidence Brady owned or was operating the laptop’.
Supt O’Neill agreed that Brady may not have been aware of the specific purpose for which the tracker was being used although he would have been able to work out that it was in the furtherance of a serious criminal offence and that a person was being targeted.
The detective also agreed that Brady is a model prisoner, is housed in the progression unit for enhanced prisoners at Mountjoy and has dissociated himself from all those involved in the criminal group.
The hearing was adjourned to April 30 to allow a probation report to be prepared for the court. Mr O’Higgins, defending, said that his client has had a ‘significant period of reflection’ in custody and has disassociated from organised crime. He said he will be making the case that there is ‘a reset button here’ and told the court that a probation report would be helpful in determining an appropriate sentence.
Device attached to Mr Kirwan’s car