Crime boss orders gang to 10pm as gardaí battle to be off street by keep lid on feud

‘BE INDOORS by 10pm or else’ – that’s the message from convicted Limerick criminal Ed Ryan to his associates and foot soldiers as they teeter on the brink of a feud with the Casey family over a cocaine battleground.

The Casey side – which includes four brothers, who were convicted of a violent attack in 2016 – live in a halting site in Southill on the other side of the city.

The emerging Casey v Ryan feud is a ‘new strand’ to violence in a city that has enjoyed relative peace since gardaí dismantled the once-powerful McCarthy-Dundon gang. During that deadly feud, at least 12 people were killed.

Limerick gardaí are determined to curb the emerging trouble before lives are lost and have already made significant progress with seizures, arrests and charges.

‘It’s all down to the turf [territory],’ sources said. ‘Obviously the boom is back and the distribution and sale of cocaine is up.’

The new feud began after one of Ed Ryan’s associates allegedly received a beating from a Casey member.

‘We say alleged, because it was never reported. But it was fairly severe – that is the intelligence the gardaí have,’ a source added. ‘It has been tit for tat ever since.’

Ed Ryan and his brother Kieran ‘Rashers’ Ryan, both from Moyross and in their 30s, were released from prison in 2015 after serving lengthy sentences for firearm possession.

Their father Eddie was chief enforcer for drug dealer Christy Keane in

the 1990s, but later broke away. He tried to murder Keane in 2000 and was later shot dead by Christy’s brother Kieran Keane and Philip Collopy. The Caseys are also no strangers to violence in the city. Brothers Jimmy, Simon, Francis and Terry, all from the Clonlong Halting Site in Southill and aged between 23 and 39, were convicted in 2016 of a violent assault during which they savagely beat a man before leaving him in a ditch.

‘The intelligence that is coming in is that Ed Ryan has put a message out to all his crew in Moyross that they have to be in off the streets by 10pm,’ a source said. ‘In relation to this type of feuding, the key players have been locked up or murdered, so Limerick hasn’t seen a lot of this in recent years.

‘This is a new strand – the Caseys and the Ryans wouldn’t have really crossed each other’s paths before.

‘We now have new upand-coming thugs and gardaí are hoping they can stop it before it really kicks off.’