Minister vows to restore law to Limerick

THE Minister for Justice last night pledged to restore law and order to Limerick.

Minister Michael McDowell held an emergency meeting yesterday with Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne and Deputy Commissioner Noel Conroy to draw up a plan in response to the escalation of violent crime in the city.

Afterwards he said nobody was above the law. “The law is there and everyone in Limerick should uphold the law and stand by the forces of law,” he said.

One man has been killed, another stabbed and two kidnapped in the last seven days and armed gardaí have been drafted to restore calm.

Today, gardaí in the city will investigate if the high-profile abduction of two Limerick brothers was a hoax.

Kieran, 19, and Eddie Ryan, 20, dramatically reappeared after being missing for six days.

The two men walked into a garda station in Portlaoise at 3am yesterday and were reunited with their family three hours later. Gardaí were last night hoping to interview the brothers and Chief Superintendent Gerry Kelly said he was keeping an open mind.

Supt Kelly said he believed the “young men had certainly undergone some type of experience but you have to keep an open mind in any investigation”.

Some six hours before the brothers turned up, Limerick’s top criminal was shot dead in an execution-style killing.

Kieran Keane, 36, was bound and shot in the head in Drombanna, four miles outside the city.

Keane’s nephew, Owen Tracey, 30, was stabbed seven times to the upper body in the same attack, but he managed to raise the alarm around 10pm.

Mr Keane had been questioned about the abduction of the Ryans and gardaí believe the murder and kidnapping investigations could be linked.

The 36-year-old had been one of the chief suspects in the shooting dead of Eddie Ryan, father of the missing boys, in 2000.

A man and a woman were last night being questioned in connection with the Keane shooting at Roxboro Garda Station. The two were arrested at 4am yesterday.

Owen Tracey is still in a serious but stable condition in the Mid Western Regional Hospital.

The two Ryans celebrated with family and friends after they returned home, but they refused to talk about their ordeal.

“I got threatened and I’m not going to talk to no one about it. I’ve been threatened not to talk to no one,” Kieran Ryan said.

The men’s uncle, John Ryan, said his nephews were not hurt or injured by their captors.

“According to the boys themselves they were well treated. They were looked after,” he said.