Updated 22.09pm
IT’S BEING REPORTED that the State funeral of Garda Tony Golden will take place on Thursday afternoon.
Further details emerged this afternoon about the tragic killing of an on-duty garda and the shooting of a young mother in county Louth yesterday evening.
Speaking to reporters outside Dundalk Garda Station, Superintendent Gerry Curley said the 21-year-old woman had gone to Omeath Garda Station yesterday by appointment to make a statement about a domestic incident.
She was then accompanied by Garda Tony Golden and her father to a house in the Mullach Alainn estate to collect her belongings. The woman’s father remained outside and heard gunshots shortly after his daughter and Garda Golden entered.
He raised the alarm and local gardaí and emergency services responded.
“Tony Golden was found with a number of gunshot wounds which proved to be fatal,” the superintendent told reporters.
Known to gardaí
A 24-year-old man, named as Adrian Crevan Mackin was also found with a fatal gunshot wound and the young woman who had earlier made a complaint to gardaí suffered serious injuries.
Curley said the woman, Mackin’s girlfriend and a mother of two young children, remains in critical condition in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.
Local Green Party councillor Mark Deary knows the woman and said her condition stabilised overnight:
A young woman, her family are with her now. The wider family are up supporting her grandmother at the house. If they ever get over it’ll be a miracle but please God she’ll pull through.
Since news broke of the incident, it has emerged the man was known to gardaí and was on bail, having appeared in court in January on charges of being a member of an unlawful organisation. He is believed to have turned the gun on himself and taken his own life after shooting his girlfriend and Garda Golden.
The garda was based in Omeath Garda Station and lived in Blackrock, Co Louth. He was married with three young children and was described today by Garda Commissioner Noirín O’Sullivan as a “proud family man”.
She said the loss is “unthinkable” for his wife Nicola, for his children and their extended family.
O’Sullivan paid credit to the man’s colleagues for their professionalism at such a difficult time for them personally.
When a colleague is lost in such tragic circumstances they have to park the emotion, you know…
She said it had been very traumatic for officers who attended the scene, some of whom had also been at the scene of the murder of Garda Detective Adrian Donohoe over two years ago.
This evening the Commissioner visited the house where the tragic death of one of her colleagues took place.
Golden is the 88th garda to have been killed in the line of duty and Vice President of the Garda Representative Association toldTheJournal.ie that members of the force are in shock today.
Dangerous
Fine Gael councillor for Drogheda, Richie Culhane, who is a former member of the force, told Morning Ireland that the Louth division “still remains a very dangerous place to work”. He said gardaí working in border areas are still putting their lives at risk every day.
Responding to reports of the garda going to the scene alone, Culhane said this is a “very dangerous situation to place members of the force in”.
The councillor said further recruitment in the force is needed, particularly in border areas.
Councillor Mark Deary said the small, close-knit community of Omeath has been left “speechless” by the tragedy.
In the school carpark there just dropping the kids off at school and talking to our friends and neighbours about the most unbelievable invasion of violence, awful awful violence that has left a garda dead, the perpetrator himself dead and a young woman, a neighbour of ours, struggling for her life and we just pray for her and hope for a full recovery.
He described the incident as “an assault on us all”.
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