No clear motive in gun attack on hospital guards

MYSTERY continued yesterday to surround a shocking gun attack on security guards at a Dublin hospital.

Garda sources yesterday played down media reports linking the shooting to an earlier incident in St James’s Hospital’s A&E department.

Two security guards, both foreign nationals, were injured when armed men opened fire on them at around 4.30am on Tuesday. The guards, aged in their 20s, received minor wounds from what appeared to be shotgun pellets.

A Garda source said they had not established a motive for the shooting.

The source played down reports that the attack was in retaliation to some earlier incident in the casualty department.

“It’s not clear they are linked, if they are linked at all,” he said.

Several Garda sources said the shooting was “very odd”. They said there was nothing in relation to the security guards that would suggest they were targeted for a specific reason.

The fact that the guards were shot in open ground, near an exit, away from the main hospital building, suggests they weren’t singled out.

Gardaí don’t think the gunmen were in the process of carrying out a robbery and were disturbed.

Sources said that a van found burnt out on Aughavanagh Road in nearby Crumlin a short time after the shooting could have been used by the gunmen, but again stressed they had not firmly linked it yet.

A van, described as blue, was seen leaving the Rialto exit of the hospital, where the shooting took place, at the time. The van found in Crumlin was green, but gardaí said it would be easy to mistake green for blue at night.

Gardaí are engaging in the lengthy process of trawling through available CCTV footage at the hospital.