Gangland witnesses to be offered protection

INDIVIDUALS linked to organised crime gangs are likely to be targeted and offered protection to turn State’s witness as a new garda task force was announced yesterday following the 18th gangland- related killing this year.

Fifty gardaí have been assigned to the new organised crime task force announced by Commissioner Noel Conroy in the wake of the murder of a 27-year-old man in north Dublin on Tuesday night.

Noel Roche was shot three times in the head as he sat in the passenger seat of a black Mondeo car outside the Yacht Pub on the Clontarf Road. The shots were fired from a car or motorbike that pulled up on the city-bound bus lane.