Crime boss may seek revenge over murders

Gardaí fear one of the country’s top crime bosses will seek revenge for the murder of a close relative — one of two people gunned down in a gangland attack.

A crime family suspected of being behind the shooting has gone to ground and teams of detectives are trying to track them down.

Andy Barry, a 31-year-old gang enforcer, was shot dead at his home in the quiet Kildare village of Kilcock after two gunmen entered the house on Tuesday night.

An Eastern European national in his early 30s was also fatally shot. He managed to run out the back door of the house and climb over a rear wall into a neighbour’s garden before he collapsed and died.

While he has not been officially identified, gardaí suspect the man is a 31-year-old Lithuanian. They also suspect he had only just arrived in the house when the gunmen struck.

Two others, a Kildare man aged in his early 30s and a second man from Lithuania, aged 25, were shot and seriously injured.

Gardaí suspect the double murder was in retaliation for a gun attack on the home of a family in the Jobstown area of Tallaght, west Dublin, on Dec 13 last. Eleven shots were fired into the house, but nobody was injured.

Detectives suspect that shooting was itself in revenge for an incident two days previously outside the same home, where both sides of the feud had arranged a “straightener” or meeting to sort out a dispute.

Garda sources said witnesses told them there was a scuffle between men outside this house and that someone from the crime family fired two shots from a shotgun into the air.

When gardaí responded, they stopped a car nearby with four “heavies” inside, including Andy Barry. “We suspect that what happened in Kilcock was in retaliation for the shooting on Dec 13 last,” a Garda source said.

He said teams of officers were trying to locate members of this crime family and the row was over a “drug feud”, to do with either a turf war over territory or a drug debt.

He said gardaí were concerned that Barry’s relative, one of the country’s biggest drug traffickers, would retaliate. “That is our fear. He won’t take this lying down and he is well connected.”

This drug boss, aged in his 40s, is originally from Tallaght and moved to Kildare many years ago, from where he directs a massive drug importation operation.

Superintendent John Gilligan said the gunmen did not break in to the house and either managed to open the door or were admitted by the occupants.

He said gardaí believe there were two, possibly three, gunmen, and that each was armed.

“Whether the gunmen knew they were going to find four men in the house or not is subject to investigation. Certainly the people who came to the house were determined to shoot at least one person if not more.”

He said the four men were friends or acquaintances and asked that anyone who saw anything suspicious from 9pm onwards on Tuesday, to contact them at Leixlip Garda Station on 01 6667800 or on the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111.