Body chop thug is out of jail here
■ Mob shooting probe upgraded to murder
A DANGEROUS criminal who dismembered a man’s body and dumped it in a canal has been released from prison, we can reveal.
The Star has learned that feared criminal Philip County, who is still wanted in the Netherlands, walked free from Castlerea
Prison in Co Roscommon last Friday - after serving two years behind bars for possession of cocaine and MDMA.
County (35), who is originally from Lucan in West Dublin, is understood to still be wanted to serve the remainder of a 21-month sentence for concealing, removing and disposing of the corpse of Dubliner Keith Ennis with a chainsaw in Amsterdam in 2009.
Sources say it is possible that
Dutch authorities will now seek
County’s extradition - to serve out the remaining eight months he has on that sentence.
Raid
The thug, who has more than 50 previous criminal convictions here and has been linked to the
Kinahan cartel in the past, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2017 for hiding Mr Ennis’s body after Ennis was stabbed to death in a Rotterdam apartment.
In 2020 County, who had returned to Ireland and was living in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine and MDMA with a street value of €7,298.
It followed an armed raid at his home in October 2017.
The court was told that when gardaí called to County’s home they found 71 grams of cocaine, 33 grams of MDMA and 30 MDMA tablets.
FREE MAN: County now
A DRUG dealer who was blasted just over a month ago died in hospital yesterday — and a murder probe is under way.
Gary “The Canary” Carey (41) had been in hospital since the incident which saw him targeted in the underground carpark at The Hilton Hotel on Dublin’s south circular road after 11.30am on June 24.
He was shot six times — including in the chest, arm and leg — but spoke to paramedics at the scene before he was brought to St James’s Hospital.
Although it was initially believed he would survive the attack, the criminal, who had just returned from spending time in Spain, contracted sepsis in the middle of July which saw his condition deteriorate dramatically.
And at lunchtime yesterday he was pronounced dead.
A garda spokesman confirmed: “A man who was being treated in hospital for serious injuries following a shooting incident in an underground carpark of a premises on the South Circular Road in Kilmainham, Dublin 8, on Friday, June 24, 2022, has died.
“He was pronounced dead in St James’s Hospital on Friday, August 5, 2022.
“The office of the State Pathologist and the local Coroner have been notified and a post-mortem examination has been arranged.
“Investigating gardai have commenced a murder investigation.”
Arrests
No arrests have yet been made but the probe has established that a silver Audi was used as a getaway vehicle by the hit-team and believe the vehicle may have been left in the car park for some time prior to the attack.
That following weekend, the car was found burnt out in Blessington, Wicklow.
Sources told how Carey, from Dublin 8, was targeted because he was “punching above his weight” in the drugs trade, and was encroaching on other gangs’ turf.
At the scene of the shooting, he told responding gardai that Brian “King Ratt” Rattigan’s gang was responsible.
Rattigan’s associates previously targeted Carey after falling out some years ago.
The brute was released from prison last year following an 18-year stint for killing lockedup Kinahan cartel enforcer Fat Freddie Thompson’s close pal Declan Gavin in 2001.
But sources say he never gave up his drug pushing business, continuing to run it from behind bars before his release from jail.
Another theory gardai are investigating is that Carey may have been hit by the Dublinbased crime gang known as “The Family”.
Carey, who had got a hair transplant in Turkey earlier this year, was well aware that he was under threat.
Last November, Carey was shot at up to ten times as he sat in a car in Ballyfermot Crescent in Dublin.
In March 2021, another hit-team