Shooting of bouncer 'was planned', hears court

The chief prosecution witness in the trial of four men accused of shooting a Limerick bouncer has told a jury at the Central Criminal Court that there had been an earlier plan to kill the bouncer before he shot him in the chest and in the head.

James Martin Cahill told Mr Roger Sweetman SC, defending Desmond Dundon, that he was told after the murder that Mr Dundon and his brother, co-accused John Dundon had been supposed to carry out the hit. "When I was over in England they said the lads was down there before and they couldn't do it."

Mr Cahill is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of 34-year-old Brian Fitzgerald in November 2002.

Gary Campion (aged 24), of Pineview Gardens, Moyross, Limerick, John (aged 27), and Desmond (aged 23), Dundon both from Ballinacurra Weston, Co Limerick and Clare business man Anthony Kelly (aged 50), with an address at Killrush all plead not guilty to murdering Mr Fitzgerald, on November 29, 2002 at Brookhaven Walk, Mill Road, Corbally, Limerick.

Cahill (aged 33), told Mr Sweetman that Mr Fitzgerald had been pointed out to him by Desmond Dundon on November 26 but could not explain why this would have been prior to him learning about the shooting on the 27 as he had previously told gardaí and the jury.

He told the jury that had always told the truth and that he had also told gardaí earlier this year that he had molested several children and had named names. However, Mr Sweetman told him the garda he had approached had told the court in the absence of the jury that Cahill had spoken of the abuse in such vague terms that the garda was under the impression that Cahill had been abused himself.

He agreed that the text of a statement he had written, read to him by Mr Sweetman, was correct.

Cahill said he heard screaming in his head that sounded like his victims and it only stopped when he told the truth. He was afraid of being killed in prison and had previously said he had been threatened by John Gilligan and Patrick "Dutchy" Holland although he said today this was not true but was what the voices told him to say.

He agreed with Mr Sweetman that he had refused to leave his cell to meet a consultant psychiatrist from the Central Mental Institution. The interview was conducted with the psychiatrist standing in the door of Cahill's cell. Cahill was naked, wrapped in a blanket and sitting on a plastic blue mattress on the floor.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Peter Charleton and the jury of twelve men at the Central Criminal Court sitting at Cloverhill.