A detective who crashed his car into a vehicle driven by Real IRA man Rónán Mac Lochlainn just seconds before he was shot dead by another Garda was never interviewed about his involvement on the day.
The car he was driving at the time was moved from the scene without being examined, the commission of investigation into Mac Lochlainn’s death in 1998 heard yesterday.
The head of the commission, Mary Rose Gearty SC, revealed the details when seeking clarification from a former senior Garda officer on his evidence to the commission.
A detective from the National Surveillance Unit, who gave evidence anonymously, recalled trying to save the dead man’s life by using CPR as he lay wounded and dying on the road.
“It was obvious he was getting drowsy and sleepy and some of the ERU members were saying to him ‘stay with us, stay with us’,” he said.
Mac Lochlainn (28) from Ballymun, north Dublin, was shot dead during an armed robbery by a Real IRA gang on a Securicor van at Cullenmore Bends near Ashford, Co Wicklow, on May 1st, 1998.
The gang was under surveillance at the time and when it tried to ambush the van, in busy traffic just after 5pm on the Friday of the Bank Holiday weekend, members of the National Surveillance Unit (NSU) and Emergency Response Unit (ERU) moved in.
Mac Lochlainn hijacked a Mazda car at gunpoint from a couple who were passing. As he tried to drive off while pointing his gun at gardaí, he was hit by a red vehicle driven by a member of the NSU. Just moments later he was fatally shot.
Peter Brien, a former detective attached to the NSU, said he followed the Securicor van into the scene of the ambush, though he did not know what was about to happen.
He was first into the ambush scene though he was unarmed at the time. Though he drove his car as close to the ambush scene as possible, he was stopped by a raider who told him to “get back” by pointing a sawn-off shotgun at him.
Former detective superintendent Basil Walsh who was in the charge of the ERU, said he travelled south of the Cullenmore bends via back roads to get ahead of suspects’ vehicles.
When he and the other ERU members were parked in a yard some 1½ miles from the bends, they saw the Securicor van going past.
Realising it was the likely target of the gang who had gathered by the roadside just ahead, the gardaí drove after it.
“We jumped into our cars,” he said.“The only plan was to follow them. We believed we knewthen what was going to happen.”
Asked if the plan was to intervene when the robbery began in order to arrest the raiders and prevent their escape, the now retired MrWalsh said: “Yes”.
Under questioning from Hugh Hartnett SC, for Mac Lochlainn’s family and partner Gráinne Nic Gib, Mr Walsh said he could not recall any discussion with his colleagues about the risk to public safety arising from armed gardaí intervening to stop a robbery on a public road in the middle of Bank Holiday traffic.
Unable to catch the van despite quickly driving after it,the vehicle Mr Walsh was travelling in came to a halt in the heavy traffic.
By the time he reached the ambush scene, Mac Lochlainn had already been fatally shot while trying to drive off.
“(He) was laid out on the road. It all happened very quickly.”
Mr Walsh believed the ERU was well trained and “had done theright thing” in preventing the robbery. He said of the five gang members arrested at the scene: “If they had put up a fight like Rónán Mac Lochlainn did, there could have beenmore of them killed and some gardai as well.
