None of the Emergency Response Unit officers at the siege in Abbeylara made a note of the events after Mr John Carthy had been shot dead, the Barr Tribunal heard yesterday.
Det Garda William Sisk told the tribunal he had not written an account of the events and said ERU members were not under instructions to keep records. The only note made by ERU officers at the scene was in the form of a log written by Det Garda Michael Sullivan to aid the chief Garda negotiator during the siege.
Mr John Carthy (27) was shot dead following a 26-hour siege at his Co Longford home on April 20th, 2000.
Asked by the chairman if it would be helpful if ERU members were instructed to write an aide-mémoire in the aftermath of such events, Garda Sisk replied "yes, it would be beneficial".
The issue arose after it emerged that Garda Sisk had not mentioned a key issue in a statement he made to an internal Garda inquiry into the shooting.
Garda Sisk told the tribunal he had made a decision to shoot Mr Carthy and raised his high-velocity rifle just before Mr Carthy was shot by another ERU member. This decision was not mentioned earlier.
Garda Sisk said he had not mentioned it because a lot of things had happened and it had been "a very, very traumatic incident". It was the first time he had seen someone being shot dead. He said he would have shot Mr Carthy, had his colleagues not shot him first. "It is my belief that there was a lawful justification for members to fire."
The tribunal also heard that seven live cartridges were found in the Carthy home after the siege. They were described by a Garda ballistics expert as being in a poor and rusted condition.
Mr Carthy left home at 5.45 p.m. carrying a double-barrelled shotgun with two cartridges. He broke the gun and removed one cartridge, throwing it in the ditch. He continued up the road carrying the gun containing the second cartridge.
After gardaí called on him to lay down the gun, Mr Carthy was shot twice by Det Sgt Michael Jackson. Det Garda Sisk said Mr Carthy showed no reaction and he then raised his gun to fire. However, Sgt Aidan McCabe fired two shots first. On the second shot, Mr Carthy fell to the ground and died.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Michael O'Higgins SC, claimed the log-keeper, Det Garda Sullivan, had passed on "manifestly, irresponsibly wrong" information to the chief Garda negotiator and failed to inform him of another crucial fact - namely, that Mr Carthy had told his friend, Mr Kevin Ireland, he had no intention of injuring anybody. Garda Sullivan said he had not been told this. "Neither you nor anybody went to the bother of speaking to Kevin Ireland to find out what he had said," Mr O'Higgins said.
He added that the "recklessly and irresponsibly wrong" information Garda Sullivan did pass on to the front line gave the impression that Mr Carthy was planning to do "something big" that day. The expression, in fact, related to something that Mr Carthy had said one week earlier.
Mr John Rogers SC, for gardaí, described the language used by Mr O'Higgins as "intemperate" and "inappropriate".
Mr O'Higgins apologised for any use of intemperate language but said he would be scathing if the evidence warranted it.
