Justice has been served for brave public guardian

ADRIAN DONOHOE didn’t stand a chance when he stepped out of his squad car at the Lordship Credit Union on that fateful night in January 2013 as he was about to be ambushed by a gang of armed robbers. Cold-blooded killer Aaron Brady had no intention of giving him a chance: Brady had no qualms about taking the detective’s life, pure and simple.

The conviction of the 29-year-old thug for the capital murder of the much-loved garda is to be warmly welcomed and the State should ensure that he does his time.

This was a good day for justice.

Not only is it justice for Adrian’s family, his colleagues in the Garda family and the community he served both as a police officer and a decent human being; it is also justice for every law-abiding citizen in this country.

For such a brutal, unprovoked killing of a brave garda is an attack on all of us.

By finding Brady guilty of capital murder – the most serious offence on the statute books – the jury spoke for every one of us.

After the longest trial in Irish criminal history they saw through the killer’s litany of lies and found that, yes, he deliberately shot Adrian Donohoe with a shotgun at close range in the full knowledge that he was a garda.

The conviction also stands as a tribute to the sheer determination and dedication of the detective’s colleagues who painstakingly built their case over several years.

The raw feelings of the Donohoe family and the investigation team could be heard in the voice of Chief Superintendent Christy Mangan as it crackled with emotion when he spoke to the media following the landmark conviction.

But as he said yesterday, this case is far from over. Brady was accompanied by four other gang members who will also hopefully be brought to justice in the near future.

The murder of Det Gda Donohoe has also focused attention on the deep-rooted, insidious subculture of lawlessness that pervades the rural landscape of south Armagh.

A Mafia-style code of omerta and contempt for the law has been instilled and this has no place in society.

Throughout the long-running trial there was several glimpses of a culture where “touting” – doing one’s duty as a citizen to co-operate with murder investigation – was utterly unacceptable in this lawless swathe of the Border.

It was little wonder then that this rural enclave produced virulent, highly dangerous criminals like Brady.

The gang he was involved with terrorised people along the Border, robbing with apparent impunity before slipping across the border where they knew they were safely out of the reach of the law.

It spoke volumes when Brady used his criminal activity as a diesel launderer as his alibi.

Witnesses in this case were subjected to intimidation and harassment in a flagrant show of disrespect for the judicial process.

But yesterday has shown the godfathers of “bandit country” the rule of law and respect for the police exists south of that invisible, contentious line in the map called the Border.