The head of operational policing in Co Louth has a stark New Year’s warning for the killers of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe. We have co...
The head of operational policing in Co Louth has a stark New Year’s warning for the killers of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe.
We have concluded part one of our investigation, with the conviction of Aaron Brady,” explains Chief Superintendent Christy Mangan. “We have now moved our attention to the other persons involved and we are concentrating on bringing them to justice. In 2021, that is our focus.”
In October, Aaron Brady was sentenced to life in prison for the capital murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe in January 2013.
Brady, from New Road, Crossmaglen in Co Armagh, shot and killed Det Garda Donohoe during the armed robbery of the Lordship Credit Union on January 25 that year. His wife Caroline Donohoe told the court that 58 seconds changed her and her children’s lives completely, while his parents said it was hard to accept that a good man came across such evil on that fateful night.
Chief Supt Mangan was in attendance for much of Brady’s mammoth seven-month trial at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin.
“It was very tough on Adrian’s wife Caroline and all of his family to go through such a lengthy trial, in the middle of a pandemic. The investigation into the murder was the largest scale murder investigation in the history of the State, as well as the longest trial.”
The senior officer was based at the specialist National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in the capital when Det Donohoe was murdered. He was assigned to the case.
Then, promoted to Louth in 2017, Chief Supt Mangan’s involvement in the case continued and deepened.
“The investigation took huge international police co-operation from all over Europe, the US and Australia,” he explains. “International boundaries will not stop us. We will do everything in our power to ensure everyone behind this murder is brought to justice. The emotional investment for all gardaà involved in this investigation over the past seven years has been huge. But we wouldn’t have gotten a conviction if it wasn’t for the public. Police are gatherers of information. The general public supplied the information that has so far put one man behind bars.”
The exhaustive probe into the murder of the detective aside, there has been an abundance of gangland activity in Co Louth to keep Christy Mangan fully occupied. Chiefly, the Drogheda feud. In 2018, the simmering feud came to national prominence when the shootings began.
It’s a familiar story, replicated in gang wars all over the country. A group of young men who were close friends and criminal allies fell out, sparking a bitter divide.
The men had been making names for themselves in the drug trade and became very wealthy, very quickly. But cracks soon began to appear in the Drogheda gang’s foundation, as increasing wealth stoked their greed and egos.
“It was 2018 when it kicked off,” recalls Chief Supt Mangan. “There was group A and group B. They had been getting on like a house on fire, selling drugs and making a lot of money. Then they fell out. There was a market takeover and a number of people started getting shot, houses were being burnt down and there were attacks on the mothers and fathers of some of those involved.”
Within the gang, before its implosion, was Owen Maguire and his associates, members of the Travelling community deeply involved in criminality. Maguire has a number of convictions, including threats to kill and affray. Other senior gang members included two brothers from the Co Louth town, who cannot be named for legal reasons and now live overseas.
The Drogheda gang had strong links to criminals in Coolock and Darndale in north Dublin, through the sale and supply of drugs. One volatile and dangerous criminal, Coolock hitman Robbie Lawlor, played a key role in stoking the fires of the Drogheda feud.
“The evil and mayhem really came into play when Robbie Lawlor came to town and got involved,” explains Chief Supt Mangan. “He exerted huge violence and ultimately he ended up dying a very violent death himself. Robbie Lawlor had a controlling influence on the level of violence in Drogheda. He also had the ability to influence a lot of younger criminals who would do his bidding.”
Lawlor was shot dead in Belfast on April 4 as a direct consequence of his involvement in the feud. Detectives believe it was Robbie Lawlor who initially caused the once close-knit gang to split, sparking the feud. Along with another drug dealer from north Dublin, it is understood that Lawlor convinced the two Drogheda brothers to branch out on their own away from their friends and associates, the Maguires.
The two Drogheda brothers felt they were treated like “corner boys” by the Maguires, a put-down later referenced in various social media threats by the warring factions. The once powerful Drogheda gang then split, in acrimonious circumstances, in the summer of 2018.
Owen Maguire was the very first casualty. In July 2018, Maguire was shot six times at his halting site home in the town, but survived. Robbie Lawlor was the suspected triggerman. This first shooting of the feud sparked a series of tit-for-tat shootings and killings, eventually culminating in the murder of a child in January.
“There were a number of murders, attempted murders and countless other arson and pipe bomb attacks. It was akin to gardaà taking on a small army.
“There were in excess of 200 people involved in the feud at the height of it. Their propensity for violence knew no bounds,” explains the Chief Superintendent.
“They wanted to rip each other apart. But the murder of the child in January, that was undoubtedly the worst thing to happen. It was a reality check for the entire nation, that this had gone beyond acceptable levels of criminality.”
Before the child’s murder, two other men lost their lives in the warfare. Keith Branigan and Richard Carberry were the first and second fatalities respectively before the seismic developments of the child killing in January, followed by the retaliation killing of Robbie Lawlor in April.
It is no coincidence that since the death of the notorious Coolock hitman, the Drogheda feud has quietened significantly. Chief Supt Mangan was granted extra gardaà and cash to try and stem the violence at the height of the warfare. “We got an emergency injection of gardaà in 2019 to help quell the war and that was of great assistance.”
Has it subsided to such an extent that the Drogheda feud is now over?
“It’s under a certain level of control. A lot of resources went into targeting the drug dealers involved. There were 145 suspected drug dealers identified. Last year in Louth, we arrested over 180 people over the sale and supply of drugs; more than 90 of those were in Drogheda. There will always be a potential for flare-ups of violence,” warns the senior officer.
“We still have intelligence briefings every week in relation to it. Some of the key people involved are dead, others are in prison and others have moved abroad, exhausted from looking over their shoulder. Others, to be fair, have disengaged from criminality. But there is still a cohort intent on continuing with the drug dealing and the violence.
“We can never and will never take our eye off the ball in relation to Drogheda.”
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