PHOTOS FROM THE scene of Friday’s gangland shooting at Drumcondra’s Regency Hotel have appeared in a number of papers in recent days.
One man was killed and two others injured in the attack when five gunmen stormed into the hotel in north Dublin during a boxing weigh-in. The dead man has been named as David Byrne, a known associate of the Kinahan crime gang.
Saturday’s editions of the Herald and the Irish Independent both ran images of the attackers entering the Regency:
Three of the attackers were wearing SWAT-style gear and carrying assault weapons, gardaí have said.
Another man was dressed as a woman, while a fifth attacker was described as wearing a beige cap.
The Sunday World publishing the images below yesterday:
Eamon Dillon / Twitter
Eamon Dillon / Twitter / Twitter
The faces of both men were pixelated in the photograph, with Independent.ie also publishing the images.
Speaking this morning, however, Irish Independent crime journalist Paul Williams said gardaí had attempted to block his paper from publishing the photos of the SWAT-outfitted attackers.
“We understand that the Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan tried strenuously to stop the Irish Independent publishing the first pictures,” he told Today with Sean O’Rourke, adding:
The two guys dressed up as police officers with the AK-47s… so non-identifiable. The public had a right to know what those pictures looked like.
Asked why the gardaí wanted to stop the images being published, Williams stated that it was said that it would “affect the investigation”.
Sunday World
Williams, one of the country’s best-known crime reporters, said the Sunday World had “responsibly” published the images in the public’s interest.
Part of the reasoning behind the pixelation, he said, was to protect the identities of the men over fears for their safety.
However, he also said that Garda HQ had also tried to block the publication of these images.
Also speaking on RTÉ this morning, Michael O’Toole, crime correspondent with the Irish Daily Star, which also published the above images, said that they showed the “full horror” of gangland crime:
Pictures like were in our paper today and the Herald, the Sunday World and the Indo that show the true reality of gangland crime… I don’t think that Garda management were overly happy about those pictures being [published].
A Garda spokesperson declined to comment about contacts with any newspaper, when asked by TheJournal.ie today.
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