Shot-gun accused denies killing 28-year-old

A Dublin man accused of murdering another man by shooting him at close range in the back of the head denied carrying out the killing and told gardaí his sole purpose in the crime was to take away the gun.

He also said the only reason he had gone to the scene was because the deceased had previously shot him in the back.

It was the seventh day of the trial at the Central Criminal Court in which Stephen Kelly (aged 22), from Balcurris Road in Ballymun has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 28-year-old Ian McConnell who was gunned down on the first floor landing of a block of flats at Shangan Road in north Dublin in the early hours of December 11, 2005.

Detective Garda Shane McCartan said he interviewed Mr Kelly on December 12 following his arrest the previous day on suspicion of the unlawful possession of a firearm.

He said Mr Kelly told him that witnesses could have identified him as the gunman because they saw him running away with the weapon.

Mr Kelly also told gardaí the murder had nothing to do with an incident in which a person, named in court, was alleged to have raped a minor.

He said: “It’s nothing got to do with this. The only reason I went round there was because he shot the back off me, at close range too.”

Det Gda McCartan agreed that Mr Kelly was asked about claims that there was a video clip showing this minor giving this named person oral sex.

When it was put to him that he (Mr Kelly) would not have been impressed by that, he said he had smashed up that person’s car with a baseball bat about five months previously.

During the interview which was read to the jury by Mr Fergal Foley BL, prosecuting, Mr Kelly told gardaí he had gone to the Shangan flats with two other people before the shooting and said it was up to the gardaí to find the other two.

Asked if he would identify them, he replied: “I will and me bollocks.”

He said he had walked down to the Shangan area on December 11 and had stood in the arch of a block of flats.

He said he was handed a gun in a black bag, after the shot was fired, and had taken it over to a nearby school where he had been told to leave it.

Asked by gardaí why he had gone to the flats with the others he said: “To let off shots at them. They let off shots at us.”

He said a feud had been going on for the last year and a half between the areas of Coultry and Shangan in Ballymun.

Mr Kelly said Ian McConnell had been hiding out in Finglas and was not normally at Shangan “since he got shot the last time".

He said the feud was over drugs money and had nothing to do with the Kellys.

He said Ian McConnell owed a lot of money and had had to move out of Finglas.

Asked if the man who was owed the money had been with Mr Kelly, he replied: “Do you think I’d last ten minutes out there if I told you his name?”

He denied that he was the “right hand man” of this man in Finglas, or his enforcer. When asked by gardaí if it had taken him long to make up this story, he replied: “It wasn’t a story. I’d rather go 'in there’ than be six feet under.”

Ms Mary Ellen SC, defending, put it to another witness Detective Garda Declan O’Brien that her instructions were that when Mr Kelly came to Santry garda station to be interviewed, he had secreted cocaine and sedative tablets in his back passage which he took prior to being interviewed.

She said her instructions were that the effects of the cocaine accounted for her client’s apparent alertness and willingness to answer questions.

Det Gda O’ Brien said he disagreed and that he did not believe Mr Kelly had taken drugs prior to his interviews. He said he was alert and coherent at all times. The trial, continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins and the jury.

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