Gunman found guilty in drive-by shooting case

A convicted gunman has been found guilty by a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury of a nonfatal drive-by shooting at two of his neighbours in Ballymun two years ago.

Derek "Bottler" Devoy (aged 24), of Balbutcher Drive, Ballymun, who is currently serving a seven-year firearm prison sentence, was found guilty of possession of a shotgun with intent to endanger life at Cranogue Close on September 19, 2005.

He had pleaded not guilty to the charge in his five-day trial.

Judge Patricia Ryan remanded him in custody for sentence next month. The jury deliberated for just less than five-and-a-half hours to reach a 10-2 majority verdict and had spent a night in a hotel.

Devoy was jailed for seven years last March by Judge Donagh McDonagh, along with a coaccused, David Mulvey (aged 24) of Berryfield Drive, Finglas, for possession of a loaded double-barrel sawn-off shot gun on April 6, 2006 at Market Green, Ballbriggan.

Judge Ryan thanked the jury of six men and six women for their attention throughout the trial in which evidence was given of how Devoy was recognised when a scarf slipped from his face after he shot at the two men from a car which then drove away at speed.

Ms Victoria McElligott told prosecuting counsel, Ms Mary Rose Gearty BL, she identified Devoy whom she knew "all my life" as the gunman who fired the shots at her brothers, Eugene and John Paul, from the back seat of the speeding car as they stood outside their home on Cranogue Close.

She said she had observed to one of her brothers about seeing the Mazda car with yellow registration plates around their estate in the weeks prior to the day of the shooting when she saw it drive towards her with the two back windows down and containing three people wearing hoodies and their faces covered.

Ms McElligott told Ms Gearty she shouted "here it comes" to her brothers who were across the road when she saw it arrive and a person in the back seat begin shooting out of the car window with a "cowboy gun".

She heard "four or five shots" while her brothers ran into a neighbours house. The gunman then "threw himself" back into the car and she got a look at his face when a scarf fell from it.

"I screamed and said it's 'Bottler Devoy'," Ms McElligott said before explaining that "Bottler" was his nickname and she had known her neighbours, the Devoys, "all my life".

Ms McElligott said Devoy then pointed the gun out the window at her and she pulled a coat over her head until she heard the car moving off.

She then ran to the neighbour's house where her brothers had fled and was let in after banging on the door.

Ms McElligott said the woman in this house complained about a problem with her back and she feared she had been shot. When she lifted up the woman's top she found a small graze on her lower back.

She said she had "an unobstructed view" while observing the movements of the car which she believed was the same car she had seen parked on Balbutcher Drive outside various neighbours' houses, including the Devoy's, over the previous few weeks.

When defence counsel, Mr Peter Finlay SC (with Mr Paul Greene BL) suggested that "a normal person would run for cover" in the scene she had described, Ms McElligott replied: "I was watching my two brothers getting nearly killed."

Mr Eugene McElligott told of the "wind going past my ear" while he ran for safety into a woman's house and of finding after the shooting that "the gaff was broken up".

Mr John Paul McElligott agreed he was "terrified" by the shooting and also said that afterwards the house he escaped into was "in bits".

He had ran for safety after his sister shouted and he looked up to see "a man leaning out of the back window of a car with a gun in his hands" and told Mr Finlay: "I wasn't hanging about to ask him his name."