Locals ‘won’t shed too many tears’

APART from their families and loved ones, there will be few in Blanchardstown who will mourn the news from Spain.

Such is the reputation of Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg that people in the area are slow to believe the remains are those of the leaders of the notorious Westies gang.

“Most people are waiting until it is confirmed,” said one local community worker.

“No one believed it out our way, when it was reported two years ago, that they had been abducted and kidnapped. If it is them it’s absolutely brilliant news.”

A local drug activist said: “We won’t shed too many tears. But it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility it isn’t them. Don’t be surprised if the bodies are two old hobos.

“Having said that, it does seem to be fairly elaborate, but nothing would surprise you with Sugg and Coates.”

The scepticism is a reflection of the fear and terror the Westies gang instilled into the sprawling estates of Corduff, Mulhuddart, Hartstown and Clonsilla for more than six years.

They did this through intimidation and extreme violence.

Criminal rivals kept out of their way. Those that didn’t, like drug dealer Paschal Boland, were murdered while other criminals, like Jeffrey Mitchell, were subject to attempted murder.

Only the bravest of drug activists and community workers would speak out against them in public.

Drug addicts, who bought their drugs, were terrified of them.

“They had everybody terrified. Their intimidation was random, but vicious,” said one local community representative. “If you got a hiding off them fellas, you got a hiding. They beat some people to an inch of their lives. One fella had to have his face reconstructed.”

In one particularly sadistic incident, Coates and Sugg ordered their henchmen to mutilate and savagely beat a drug addict for owing 250, while they listened on a mobile phone.

The henchmen partially cut off the addict’s ear, slashed the back of his head and broke his jaw.

In other alleged incidents:

They repeatedly burned a woman’s breast with a lighted cigarette.

Threw an addict off a fifth floor balcony in Ballymun flats.

Tortured an addict by attaching jump leads to his nipples and slashing him with a knife.

Permanently broke a woman’s leg after throwing a concrete block on her after she lost their heroin.

The gang was so brazen that they even staked out the house of a senior detective investigating them.

A major garda clampdown, partially the result of public pressure, began in earnest in late 2001.

A number of gang members were charged for drug offences and large quantities of drugs were seized.

But gardaí could not get anyone to give evidence against the two bosses.

The pair fled to Spain in 2003. Sugg was involved in a feud with two brothers, Andrew and Mark Glennon, who had broken away from their gang in competition.

A member of the Glennon gang subsequently shot dead Sugg’s brother Bernard in August 2003.

Coates fled in May 2003, after getting caught up in a shoot-out with gardaí in Co Cavan.

From Spain, they tried to set up a drug exporting business to their gang in Blanchardstown.

It’s speculated that they may have crossed with an Irish drug gang based in Alicante, resulting in their own deaths.