Carthy home demolished soon after siege

LESS than two weeks after Longford man John Carthy was shot dead following the Abbeylara siege, work began to demolish the house he shared with his mother, the Barr Tribunal heard yesterday.

Michael Maguire, a Longford-based builder, said he was contracted by the county council to erect a new house for Rose and John Carthy and began construction work on November 24, 1999. By the time of the shooting the new structure, adjacent to the Carthy’s old house, had been substantially completed and was ready for occupation, apart from the electricity supply which had yet to be connected.

John Carthy, who had a history of psychiatric illness, died on the roadway outside his home on April 20, 2000 after being shot by members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit.

Mr Maguire said he was requested by the council to demolish the old structure and he began to strip the roof on May 2. He knocked down the walls of the house with a mechanical digger on May 11 and covered over the site with topsoil.

“We drank tea a couple of times a day in Carthy’s when we were building the new house,” Mr Maguire told tribunal counsel Michael McGrath SC. Replying to Mr McGrath, he said Mr Carthy never spoke about moving from the old to the new house. “That never came up,” he added.

Garda Garard Scanlon, who was attached to the mapping section at garda headquarters at the time of the shooting, produced a series of maps setting out the positions of members of the gardaí who were connected with the Abbeylara incident. He recorded locations for 30 gardaí, both uniformed and in plain clothes, as outlined to him after the incident.

He also described the positions of ERU gardaí. Three of them were inside the dwelling, one was at the back of Carthy’s house, while others were in neighbours’ houses and two were located at the negotiating point on the roadway.

Garda Scanlon said he had also been told about the positions of four civilians, including John Carthy’s sister Marie and his psychiatrist, Dr David Shanley, on the day the 27-year-old man was killed.

Det Sgt Joseph McCartney, garda photographic section, described arriving at Abbeylara on the night of the shooting and taking a series of photographs. Interior pictures of the house showed some rooms to be in a state of general disarray. In one of the bedrooms the curtains had been kept closed by clothes pegs.

Outside he took close-ups of where John Carthy died, the body covered with a red blanket. To the left of the body there was an empty cartridge belt, as well as a double-barrel shotgun in the closed position. In another photograph, a garda colleague had opened the gun which showed a single cartridge in the left barrel.

The tribunal continues today.