Sunday Times attempts to link Gavin and Millie attack to Gangland feud

The Sunday Times newspaper for December 31, 2006 has made a lame attempt to link the attack on Gavin and Millie Murray to an ongoing feud between the McCarthy-Dundons and the Keane-Collopy gangs.

In the article, entitled “Focus: A tale of two cities.” due to appear inthe paper this morning, the story’s author, Brian Carroll claims that the attack on the children might be linked to the Gangland Feud.

What is his basis? It turns out that another child, Jordan Crawford was shot in the leg in Southill so if a child isbeing attacked, it must be part of the feud.

From the article:

The two children are back in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, having been allowed out for three days over Christmas. Their mother has since been rehoused on Cratloe Road in Limerick, but her estranged partner, Niall McNamara, remains homeless.

“I’m not in a feud with anyone. I have never been into drugs,� McNamara said last week, while he tended to Gavin and Millie. “Nobody has explained to me why my children were burned, why my house was burned. For four and a half months I have been here in the hospital. I’m the one giving the children their baths with them screaming with the pain. I want to know why this happened.�

The attack is possibly linked to a feud in another part of the city. In November, another Limerick child hit the headlines. Five-year-old Jordan Crawford was shot in the leg by gunmen intent on killing his uncle, Paul Crawford, a member of the McCarthy-Dundon gang. The gunmen, who were acting for the Keane-Collopy gang, couldn’t get Paul so they shot the boy with a machine gun.

It is also worth mentioning that up until now, there is no statement claiming that the people who attacked the Crawford home deliberately shot Jordan because they could not get Paul Crawford. While the shooting of Jordan Crawford, whether it be accidental or otherwise, is horrendous, one has to ask, is Mr. Carroll trying to make things sound worse than they really are?

Mr. Carroll has obviously not come across initial reports that the reason the car was fire-bombed was because Sheila Murray refused to give some scum bags a lift to the District Court, making it more a random act of violence against an ordinary member of the public than a feud related incident. By all accounts, Sheila Murray was not mixed up in either side of the ongoing feud.

The way I see it, and as someone who has been watching the news coming out of Limerick this Christmas, is that it has been quieter than usual in Limerick, and the so-called paper of record that is the Sunday Times had some extra space (which isn’t hard when a single copy, consisting of six sections, two magazines, and countless pieces of advertising crap from the likes of Dell and Aldi etc., consumes half a tree) that needed to be filled, and what better way to fill it than to regurgitate not even yesterday’s news, but the day before yesterday’s news.

The full article can be found here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 1:37 am and is filed under All. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.