Members of the Carthy family rang Granard Garda station offering to speak to Mr John Carthy the night the siege began, however their names were not recorded by the garda on duty, the tribunal was told.
Garda Maeve Gorman, the duty garda in Granard Station on the night of the siege, said that between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., she received a number of phonecalls from people identifying themselves as relatives of Mr Carthy. The callers were offering to speak to Mr Carthy in an attempt to mediate in the standoff between him and the gardaí.
Garda Gorman said she had not logged the calls and wasn't sure how many calls there had been. The members of the Carthy family were not well-known to her she said. "There were some phonecalls from the family but I didn't know who they were. They [the calls] were all very short. They just said who they were." Garda Gorman had taken the initial call from the Walsh house that evening, requesting that gardaí be sent out to the Carthy house, where Mr Carthy had started firing shots. Garda Gorman had logged this call.
She told the tribunal she had received a later call, which she did not log, from Ms Walsh asking where the gardaí were. At 9 p.m. she took a call from Mr Thomas Walsh in Cork. Mr Walsh said he would be the best person to speak to his cousin, Mr Carthy, Garda Gorman said. Justice Barr asked Garda Gorman if she had any training in dealing with situations involving a person with mental illness. She replied that she had not.
