Garda patrols increased as fears of reprisal for northside Cork shooting
The lord mayor of Cork, Cllr Chris O’Leary, appealed for calm last night and offered to mediate as Ciara Sheehan, 21, continued her recovery after receiving a gunshot wound to the neck during Sunday’s gun attack on her boyfriend’s house in the Hollywood Estate area of Hollyhill.
“I’ve called on people to resist from retaliations and have offered, along with the gardaí, to mediate to alleviate the problems,” Mr O’Leary said.
“Sometimes things get to a head where people feel they can’t back down.
“But we’re saying there is an opportunity here to step back, to be calm about it, and to resolve the underlying issues.
“It would mean that nobody would lose face, which is important.
“The community should not be in fear of retaliations that could spiral out of control and end up with someone being fatally injured — ending up in a coffin.
“We’ve seen it in other cities and we don’t want to see it here,” the lord mayor said.
Ms Sheehan, who was visiting her boyfriend, Dillon Cunningham at his house in Hollywood Estate, was shot in the neck after a gun was fired through the front window of his home just after 1am.
She was rushed by friends in a car to Cork University Hospital where she is now said to be in stable condition.
Gardaí made a breakthrough in the investigation yesterday when they recovered an automatic pistol from waste ground in the Shankiel area, close to the scene of the shooting.
It is undergoing forensic and ballistics test to establish if it was the weapon fired at the Cunningham home.
It is hoped that ballistic tests on the bullet removed during emergency surgery on Ms Sheehan’s neck will allow detectives to connect it to the recovered gun.
Detectives are also anxious to establish if the recovered gun is linked to other criminal activity, including a drive-by shooting in the Knocknaheeny area in July 2014.
The man injured in that attack knew his attacker but no complaint was ever made to gardaí.
Gardaí are also examining threatening comments made on Facebook in the hours before Sunday’s shooting in which an individual known to gardaí threatened ‘war’ on named individuals.
Gardaí are still questioning a man, 29, and a woman, 22, who were arrested close to the scene of the shooting. They are being detained under the provisions of Section 30 of the Offences of the State Act and can be held for up to five days.
Local Sinn Féin Cllr Thomas Gould said Sunday’s shooting is the most serious in a string of increasingly violent attacks, all linked to one individual, on people across the northside.
It is understood that members of the Cunningham family, described by neighbours as good, honest, decent, hardworking people, were drawn into conflict with the same individual in recent months.
“There are serious criminals operating in Cork at the moment that are known to gardaí, and they seem to have no fear of being arrested and people are asking ‘how is that happening?’,” Mr Gould said.
“This incident on Sunday was the second shooting on the northside in just over a year, there have been two pipe bomb attacks, and numerous attacks with swords, machetes and Stanley blades, all connected to this one individual.
“It’s all linked to heroin dealers who think they are untouchable.
“People will be disappointed if the gardaí can’t deal with this.”
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