Mr John Carthy's sister, Marie, told the inquest she tried to go to the aid of her brother as he lay dying on the roadway in Abbeylara but gardai prevented her. "I tried to go to him but the guards wouldn't let me . . . I wanted to say goodbye but they wouldn't let me."
She said she was annoyed gardai did not allow her to speak to her brother during the siege, especially when their mutual friend, Mr Martin Shelley, was allowed to negotiate. "At one point they pushed me and shoved me," she said.
She had thought she would be allowed to speak to her brother. "They (the gardai) said they would organise it and seemed to be organising it," she said. As she sat in a car near the house gardai ahead began "scattering".
"I was just at Walshes' gate and I could see John lying . . . on the ground." At this point Ms Carthy broke down and the remainder of her statement was read by counsel for the family, Mr Patrick Gageby SC.
Ms Carthy said she believed media coverage of the siege had further upset her brother as he wouldn't have wanted people to know his medical history, "especially people in Galway who wouldn't have known".
Mr Gageby said TV3 and RTE Radio both named Mr Carthy.
"It would make him more agitated," Ms Carthy said. She confirmed that Irish TV stations could be received in the house even after the TV cable had been cut by gardai.
Mr Carthy's mother, Rose, told the inquest her son was worried the house they lived in would be knocked down and he would have to move out of it. On the day of the siege she was in her house with John talking as usual. "John then started to say no one was going to put him out of his own house. We had been notified by the council that they would knock our old house when we went into the new one. John was against this," she said.
"He went on about it and at about 3.40 p.m. he went down to one of the rooms and took out his gun. He returned to the kitchen with it and a box of cartridges and started saying no one was going to put him out of his own house. He then loaded the gun and fired two shots. He then sat down beside the fire."
Mrs Carthy went to her sister Mrs Nancy Walsh's house two doors up. Before she left he hadn't loaded the gun, which he had bought in Ballinalee for clay pigeon shooting.
Mrs Carthy's statement was read to the inquest by her counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC, while Mrs Carthy sat in the witness box. Mr Rory McCabe, SC for the State, extended his sympathies to Mrs Carthy and her family and described Mr Carthy's death as an "unfortunate tragic event".