Significant Garda presence at funeral of gangland feud victim
It whipped into family members and close friends gathered outside the home of murdered 27-year-old Derek Coakley Hutch, known as Del Boy.
While there was little protection against the elements, the family were protected by elite armed officers and uniformed gardaí, including a parked Armed Support Unit jeep.
This has become a recurring nightmare for the Hutch family, with a fourth member gunned down by the Kinahan crime cartel, which has already been linked to 12 murders, in what has been described as an “extermination campaign”.
Local gardaí were having to implement their policing plan for the funeral while also investigating Tuesday night’s murder of Jason Molyneaux — a close friend of Derek’s who had only been at his wake that night.
While detectives are investigating several lines of inquiry, some sources suspect Molyneaux was killed by the Kinahan cartel, which would, if confirmed, bring their murder count in the feud to 13.
Local gardaí yesterday employed a significant presence that wasn’t intrusive and was sensitive to locals.
For some gardaí, it was their fifth feud murder whose funeral they were policing.
Just before 11am, the sun peeped out and the horse-drawn carriage, white framed with glass panels, moved down from the house on Buckingham St.
It was followed by a lone piper and family mourners on foot.
They passed the local Social Democrats’ councillor Gary Gannon’s office, the well-known Discount Stores corner store and the Hope drug recovery offices.
The cortege curved at the junction with Sean McDermott St and passed the landmark Home Memorial for victims who have died as a result of drugs.
The cortege stopped near the Crinian Youth Project, where the coffin was taken out and pallbearers, rotating between them, carried the coffin for the final 100m or so to Our Lady’s of Lourdes Church.
A family member to the front carried a single floral display with the word DAD, a reminder of the life-long devastation vistied upon the deceased’s two young children, Layla and Brody.
Hundreds of locals had gathered in the bitter cold as the coffin was carried in.
The large church was festooned with quilts from family members who have lost people to drugs, erected by the National Family Support Network, which has its annual remembrance service this evening.
Fr Michael Casey described Derek’s murder last Saturday week in Clondalkin, west Dublin, as a “shocking, barbaric, violent, cowardly act” that had brought “havoc, pain, suffering and devastation” to both his family and the wider community — a community, he said, which again witnessed a violent death on Tuesday night, with the shooting dead of Jason Molyneaux.
He described the people behind the reign of violence as “soulless” which was making everyone in the community feel “vulnerable”.
As the funeral cortege departed for Glasnevin cemetery, officers held a press briefing a couple minutes’ walk away at James Larkin House, where James Molyneaux was shot dead.
A reminder, if one was needed, of the merciless onslaught this relatively small community is experiencing from gang feuds.
