Daly’s driver: ‘I’ll never work in taxis again’

A TAXI driver who miraculously escaped being shot during last week’s gangland murder of John Daly has said he will never drive a taxi again.

The 40-year-old father of four, including a three-month-old baby, has been left unemployed and traumatised by the killing.

Mike (not his real name) now fears the killers will come after him and his family and has barely slept with the stress and anxiety.

Daly was shot six times as he sat in the front passenger seat of a taxi driven by Mike in Finglas, north Dublin, in the early hours of last Monday week.

Mike had just pulled in at Cloonara Drive, where Daly lived with his parents, after picking up the 27-year-old criminal and five friends outside a city centre nightclub.

Recalling the shooting, Mike said: “I only saw a figure from the side of my eye. Then the side window beside John Daly exploded and that was all I saw.”

In the Sunday World, he said: “I instinctively turned away to my right to avoid the glass. Then there were five more loud bangs, one after another, which took just a second.” He had tried to get out, but Daly’s body had slumped against him.

“I could hear a gurgling sound coming from him as he lay against me, but he said nothing and didn’t move. He was dying. He breathed his last as he lay against me. There was blood everywhere. My left side was soaked in blood.”

A taxi driver for the past 16 years, Mike said he will not go back.

“I will never get into that car again and I will never work as a taxi driver again. I just wouldn’t be able for it.”

He said he can’t get what happened out of his mind.

“I keep saying over and over in my mind: ‘Please, please, please, please don’t shoot me’.

“I keep checking myself and feeling the sensation that I am bleeding along my left side where John Daly fell on me. Then I keep thinking that they [Daly’s killers] will come and target me and my family.”

Detectives in Finglas are continuing what is likely to be a lengthy investigation into Daly’s murder. There is a long list of people who wanted Daly dead, but gardaí suspect local criminals in Finglas were involved.