A MOTHER and toddler watched in horror as gunmen blasted a young father to death in the bed where the three lay sleeping in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Gardaí are investigating after a 24-year-old man was found dead in his cell in a Dublin prison, it was confirmed today.

A murder trial which heard allegations of witness intimidation dramatically collapsed at the Central Criminal Court today when the Director of Public Prosecutions entered a nolle prosecqui.

A key prosecution witness told a murder trial she was frightened when two gunmen men entered her flat last April but denied that she was "terrified" into retracting statements implicating the accused man.