Many suspects for murder of gangster Lynch

GARDAÍ are studying a long list of suspects in the murder of gangster David Lynch — a killing that also left a boy with gunshot wounds.

A 39-year-old father of four, Lynch was an armed robber and vicious bully with a string of convictions for violent offences and he had a steadily growing list of enemies, according to detectives.

He spent a number of terms in jail, including an eight-year sentence for two armed bank robberies with his uncle Frank Ward, aged 54, who was sentenced to life for a shooting in which he injured Dublin publican Charlie Chawke three years ago.

Gardaí believe Lynch’s killer deliberately struck when he was at his most vulnerable following the jailing last month of his two younger brothers, John and Neil, for a number of assaults including one on their sister’s boyfriend because they disapproved of the relationship.

Judge Miriam Reynolds, who sentenced them at Sligo Circuit Court, said they showed a complete disregard for law and order.

One senior detective said: “David Lynch got up the noses of a lot of people. He was a swaggering, vicious thug who didn’t care who he upset and that included quite a number of people who would have no qualms about using guns to settle a score.”

Lynch’s killing was the first murder of 2008. He was gunned down in Collery Drive on the edge of the Cranmore estate in Sligo town as he stepped from a van a few minutes after midnight on Friday.

He was killed by a lone gunman in dark clothing who fired a number of shots. A 12-year-old boy, a neighbour, was also shot and taken to Sligo General Hospital where he was treated for injuries that doctors said were not life-threatening.

The boy, a friend of Lynch’s son, was treated for a bullet wound in a thigh and shock. The gunman, who may have been masked, is believed to have escaped on foot.

Lynch was pronounced dead shortly after arrival in hospital.

He once appeared in court in Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim in December 2001, with his face smeared with his own excrement.

On another occasion, police in Northern Ireland found excrement smeared on the walls of a cell in which he was held in Strabane after fleeing across the border from gardaí in Lifford, Co Donegal.

Gardaí are checking if the shooting was linked to two other murders in the same area in the past two years.

Sam Smith, aged 23, was shot when he answered the door at his sister’s home in Cranmore in December 2005. He died 24 hours later on New Year’s Eve. An associate of Lynch’s is the chief suspect in that murder but gardaí do not believe Lynch himself was connected to it.

Last August, Tom Ward, also 23, died in hospital after he was attacked with a hatchet outside his parents’ home in Cranmore.

Former Sligo town mayor Tommy Cummins was only yards from Friday’s killing, which took place near his front door.

“I was at home and just a few minutes after midnight I heard what sounded like bangers or fireworks,” he said. “I went outside into the garden but saw nothing.

“Then I heard screaming and shouts and figured something was wrong.

“I saw his body on the ground; he seemed still alive.”