GARDAÍ BELIEVE the shooting dead of a convicted criminal in Dublin yesterday is linked to a gangland feud that has now claimed five lives and resulted in sustained violence for nearly eight years.
The latest killing, the 17th gun murder in the State this year, occurred outside St Laurence O’Toole Church on Sheriff Street in Dublin’s north inner city just before 5pm yesterday.
Stephen Byrne (32) from Mariners Port, off Sheriff Street, was lured from his house by a caller. Once outside, he was chased on to Sheriff Street by a gunman armed with a handgun who shot him twice, in the eye and upper body.
Two males, one in his 20s and a juvenile, were arrested by gardai last evening in connection with the shooting.
Armed gardaí deployed to the area as part of efforts to quell the feud were close by when the killing occurred.
It is believed the gunman may have escaped on a bicycle. Tensions were running high around Sheriff Street late last night as members of the feuding factions gathered on the street.
Gardaí had warned Byrne his life was in danger, and he often wore a bullet-proof vest. He was the chief suspect for a gangland killing over three years ago linked to the Sheriff Street feud and had a string of convictions.
He was known to gardaí as a joyrider when he was aged just 10 years.
In 1997, when aged 18 and addicted to crack cocaine, he and his brother Jason (then aged 21) were jailed for 12 years for a series of armed robberies.
They threatened to shoot gardaí while robbing a newsagents. In another incident, the brothers held a knife to the genital area of a jeweller while a gun was placed between his eyes and they robbed him of jewellery worth £65,000 and £5,000 in cash.
In 2008, Stephen Byrne offered a payment of €20,000 in compensation to two women he had robbed at knifepoint.
His solicitor told the court the money was a compensation sum which Byrne had received from the Residential Institutions Redress Board for “horrific” abuse as a child.
Byrne was a member of an organised crime gang based in Sheriff Street that has been feuding with a rival faction since 2003.
Both factions were once all part of the same gang, but it split when the gang’s leader and now convicted rapist Christy Griffin (40), originally from Canon Lillis Avenue, Dublin, was first accused of rape.
In December 2006 two men from the north inner city – Gerard Batt Byrne (25) and Stephen Ledden (28) – were shot dead in separate attacks as part of the feud.
Mr Ledden was shot in a case of mistaken identity. The gunman was looking for the man who had shot Gerard Batt Byrne two weeks earlier, but shot Mr Ledden instead after mistaking him for the other man.
Byrne, who was a cousin of Gerard Batt Byrne, was the chief suspect for Mr Ledden’s killing.
Another cousin, Aiden Byrne (32), was a convicted rapist who was shot dead in February as part of the Sheriff Street feud.
Stephen Byrne’s brother David (26) died last July after being hit over the head with a sock filled with batteries while imprisoned in Mountjoy.
His body was then desecrated by people who broke into the funeral home and wrote the word “Rats” across his forehead in an incident believed to be linked to the Sheriff Street feud.