Bloody gang feud linked to execution of ex-convict

Bloody gang feud linked to execution of ex-convict
Victim believed to have been stalked by gunman after release from jail

By JIM CUSACK

Sunday July 20 2008

The murder of Trevor Walsh only two days after he was released from prison, and just 11 hours after another gangland murder in Dublin, is being linked to a feud between a former gang of Finglas robbers and drug dealers which broke up three years ago.

Feuding in Finglas had died down since last October's murder of the infamous Liveline prison cell caller, John Daly, who gardai said was an associate of Trevor Walsh, who was shot dead at 12.20am yesterday in Kippure Avenue.

A gunman, who gardai believe had been stalking Walsh since his release from prison on Thursday, shot him in the head with what gardai believe was an automatic handgun. He shot him in the head a second time as he lay on the ground.

Walsh (33) had just served over two years of a three-year sentence for possession of a firearm in Finglas in 2004. He had a lengthy criminal record, with more than 50 convictions. Local people said he was a heavy cocaine user.

His murder came just 11 hours after the murder of Anthony Foster, 34, in Coolock. He was killed by a single shotgun blast to his head as he left his flat in Cromcastle Court with his partner to pick up his two young children from a creche. His partner was uninjured.

The killer escaped on a waiting motorcycle which gardai believe was stolen a short while earlier from a motorcycle shop on the Malahide Road. The owner was threatened with a shotgun and tied up during the robbery.

Gardai said that they were uncertain why Foster, who was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in 2001 for possession of a large quantity of cannabis, was murdered, but it was possible he had been involved in a dispute with another local drug dealer.

It is the second serious shooting in the area within a fortnight. Two weeks ago, Anthony Ayodeji, 21, was shot in the neck as he sat in a car in Darndale. A baby in the back seat of the car was unhurt, but was covered in blood and glass. Garda sources yesterday said there appeared to be no connection between the murder of Anthony Foster, in Coolock, and Trevor Walsh, in Finglas.

Walsh was a close associate of John Daly, the 27-year-old robber and drug dealer who was shot dead last October as he sat in the front passenger seat of a taxi. Daly created a furore when he phoned into RTE's Liveline show from his cell in Portlaoise Prison. Subsequently more than 2,000 mobile phones were found in prison searches and much stricter regimes were enforced to disrupt the drugs trade into jails. Gardai believe that leading gangs figures angered by the clampdown caused by Daly ordered his murder.

Another associate of Walsh's was Declan Curran, who died from a drugs overdose while serving a prison term in November 2004.

After Curran's death the gang disintegrated and former associates started killing each other.

At one point the rate of murders in Finglas surpassed that of Limerick and even the Crumlin and Drimnagh district, which was at the centre of another feud that has claimed 11 lives. The Crumlin and Drimnagh area, however, has resumed its reputation for bloodletting, with eight murders since last October.

- JIM CUSACK