MAN ‘WANTED TO HAND GUN TO PRIEST’

A district court judge still has to make up his mind about whether a Dundalk man accused of having a semi-automatic pistol and ammunition in St Joseph’s Redemptorist Church last year will have his case heard at the circuit court.

Wayne Dullaghan, (26), 20 Crescent 1, Muirhevnamor, is accused of having the Makarov semi-automatic pistol and seven rounds of ammunition at St Joseph’s Redemptorist Church on June 30 last year.

Dullaghan, who is in custody on another matter, was before the district court last week after Judge William Hamill said last month he wanted to hear more details about the circumstances in which the alleged incident happened.

Solicitor Conor MacGuill said it is alleged his client was found in the church with the unloaded gun and the ammunition was in a separate tin box. The solicitor said Dullaghan had explained to gardai how he had brought the gun to the church as he wanted ‘ to give it to an intermediary, which was not by appointment’.

Mr MacGuill said there was ‘precedence’ in the case where Redemptorist priests at Clonard Monastery in Belfast would have received weapons and while ‘ we are not saying it’s related to that’, the alleged incident ‘ happened in circumstances where the weapon was being put beyond use’.

Judge Hamill said the explanation is something that would ‘ have to have been checked out by Gardai’. Court presenter Sgt. Fintain McGroder told the judge Dullaghan had revealed how he had ‘found the gun and didn’t trust the Gardai and wanted to hand it over’ to a priest.

He said what Dullaghan had told Gardai had ‘ been checked through’ but officers ‘don’t know about where he found it and there are doubts about how it come into his possession’. Sgt. McGroder said it ‘couldn’t be ascertained, one way or the other’.

Judge Hamill said: ‘I need to have some facts - quite clearly, this is not a minor offence’. Sgt. McGroder said the gun was found ‘in a closed tin on the floor, away from the accused. It wasn’t concealed on his person.

‘He didn’t hand it into the Gardai because he didn’t trust the Gardai and we believe there was no harm intended to third parties, perhaps self harm.

‘He was in the church and he wanted to had it over. He stated that he found it and it couldn’t be proved one way or another’.

Mr MacGuill said his client had told Gardai he had found the gun ‘ on unused ground’.

But Judge Hamill said he didn’t want to deal with the case ‘in piecemeal fashion’ and said it made Dullaghan’s explanation to Gardai ‘ less plausible to me’ if he said he found it on private property.

He said he was going to consider the matters raised by both the Gardai and Mr MacGuill and would give them both a further opportunity to address him before he decided whether the case is heard in the district or sent to the circuit court.

Mr MacGuill said: ‘I’m taking that the court will accept that as a general principal and something understood that there has been, historically, people handing weapons over’ (to priests). He said he ‘ may need to bring an academic journal to court to illustrate that this has happened before’.

Judge Hamill said he was ‘aware of this happening’ but he ‘expected the Gardai have to make a judgement about what they are being told’. He said the case involved a semi automatic pistol, which I was told wasn’t loaded, but he had the ammunition’.

The case was adjourned to July 27, when, Judge Hamill said, he would give his decision about whether he will deal with the case.