The taxi driver who was sitting beside gangland figure John Daly when he was shot dead in Dublin eight days ago has said he does not think he will ever go back to taxi driving again.
"Michael" told Marian Finucane on her RTÉ Radio 1 programme yesterday that he was "a nervous wreck", and hadn't been outside his house since the incident happened, except when accompanied by friends.
When he picked up John Daly and five other people outside a city centre nightclub, he had not known who Daly was. He was "not uneasy" and had "no reason to think anything".
They stopped at a few places looking for drink before arriving at Daly's destination. "I asked for the fare and they were getting the money together when a car pulled up behind me. I thought it was someone trying to pass. It stopped in the middle of the road," he said. "The next minute I saw a figure at the passenger window."
He did not see the gun and first thought it was someone trying to break the passenger window. Then he heard the other shots. All "were trying to get out of the car, screaming and everything else", but "Michael" couldn't get his seat belt off.
"I was screaming, absolutely screaming, saying 'please, please, please, please, not me', or whatever, like that."
Daly had been sitting beside him and he knew Daly was "badly injured because of the amount of blood on him, on myself, and on the car . . . I didn't know what the hell was going on. I just had to get out of there."
But he was trapped by the dying Daly. "He came over on to the left-hand side of me - that's why I couldn't get the seat belt off. Because he was lying against me I couldn't press the release button on the seat belt."
Eventually he got the belt off. Outside the taxi he reached back inside its door pocket for his mobile phone and rang for an ambulance and the Garda.
Within seconds there were sirens and "everything unfolded. Police came from nowhere, everywhere."
Michael was "shaking" and thought he was "going to puke, get sick". Gardaí identified Daly and it was then that Michael realised just how serious the situation had been. "It's going to take a long time for me to go back out and trust again," he said.
