Jimmy Collins is reliving his latest brush with death, inspecting the bullet
holes from when his house was raked by gunfire. “It was three in the
afternoon and I was standing at my door when I got sprayed by a Scorpion
machinegun. What saved my life was the f****** idiot didn’t know how to use
it.
“He was only a young fella, couldn’t have been more than 15. They pumped him
full of heroin and sent him down here to do a man’s job.
“They phoned me an hour after they shot me, when I was in the hospital, to say
I’d been lucky, ‘We’ll get you sooner or later’. It’s a war now and the
streets are going to see blood pour.”
He speaks with the candour of a man with nothing to lose, holding centre stage
in a seemingly eternal feud between two criminal clans. He is surrounded by
his family, including his son, Garrett, dressed in a “monkey hat” and hoody
made popular by the rap singer 50 Cent, and his son-in-law, Christopher,
wearing a bullet-proof vest.
A police surveillance helicopter rattles overhead.
His wife, Alice, jokes that here in Ballinacurra Weston you are never more
than 20 feet from a gun. The previous day their home had been raided by
police at 5am. “The Gard’s hands were trembling as he pointed his gun at me
but I told him to f*** off when he told me to put my hands on my head,”
Alice laughed.
This is a side of Limerick life that is rarely seen beyond the boundaries of
its sink estates but which has been thrust into the limelight by the murder
of Shane Geoghegan, a 28-year-old captain in one of the city’s biggest rugby
clubs, Garryowen.
His death was a professional hit: shot with a Glock 9mm semi-automat-ic pistol
once in the head and twice in the upper body as he returned home after a
day’s rugby.
The intended target, one of Limerick’s well-known drug dealers, has survived
two previous murder attempts and moved recently from the notoriously
deprived Southill district to the safe and affluent Kilteragh estate, a
stone’s throw from Garryowen Football Club.
The killing of Mr Geoghegan led to an outpouring of grief, despair and anger
across Ireland not seen since the murder in 1996 of the journalist Veronica
Guerin, killed by the gangsters she wrote about.
There have been calls for internment, and new legislation permitting the use
of surveillance and intelligence in crime-gang trials is being rushed
through Parliament.
Even though Jimmy Collins is aligned with the Dundon/McCarthy clan – the
dominant crime syndicate in Limerick and possibly in Ireland – and the gang
that is the prime suspect for Mr Geoghegan’s murder, he has been angered by
the reaction to the rugby player’s killing. He insists on taking us to Mount
St Oliver cemetery to see the graves of those killed in the feud with the
Keane/Collopy clan. Depending on whom you believe with regard to when it all
began, there have been at least 14 victims in recent years.
“It was wrong, I’m sorry for his death. He was in the wrong place at the wrong
time. But I didn’t kill him and I’m getting my house battered in and my
family harassed for it. Just because a rugby player gets killed there’s holy
war. There was never any of this fuss when my friends were getting killed
and some were just as innocent.”
Limerick should be celebrating this weekend but a pall of shame hangs over the
“ancient City well versed in the arts of war”, as its motto reads. A
minute’s silence will be observed today before Ireland’s match with New
Zealand at Croke Park, Dublin.
For rugby-mad Limerick the international is merely a warm-up for the contest
between Munster and the All Blacks at Thomond Park, the city’s sparkling new
stadium rising above the decaying estates.
The fixture commemorates the 30th anniversary of Munster’s famous victory over
the All Blacks, the only Irish side yet to beat New Zealand. Shane Geoghegan
should have been among the spectators, alongside his clubmates.
Instead, Garryowen held a clubhouse Mass for him last night and has cancelled
all its matches and training sessions until further notice. The No 3 light
blue jersey worn by him has been retired for the remainder of the season.
Even in song this city of 90,000 is divided. Contrast the proud anthem of
Garryowen – “Our hearts so stout have brought us fame/ For soon ’tis known
from whence we came. Where e’er we go they dread the name Of Garryowen in
Glory” – with the “gangsta” rap of Ballinacurra Weston, Moyross, Southill
and St Mary’s Park of the Island Field, where grey streets are punctuated
with boarded-up houses and burnt or rusting debris lies scattered across the
greens, picked at by roaming horses.
The soundtrack and the style here is alien to Limerick’s rugby culture – a
sport introduced to the city in the 19th century by the British Army
garrison.
Graffiti lauds Bullitz, a local rap star whose song Da Graveyard tells the
story of another Limerick. “It’s sad but true / Limerick life can be cruel .
. . God knows down here the next time someone dies / there’ll be retaliation
/ I can’t get a job with this Limerick life / I’m feeling like I’m trapped
and I can’t survive / There’s people round here they don’t even care when
you’re messing with death / you know what to expect / the war will continue
until you’re put to rest.”
In one visit by The Times this week, hours after Mr Collins’s home was
searched as part of the Shane Geoghegan murder inquiry involving 30 raids in
Limerick, Cork and Dublin, police examined waste ground and scorched, gaping
houses for drugs and weapons. One officer said: “If we find anything we
don’t touch it until we’ve called in armed support. If we tried to leave
with the stuff they’d just take it off us.”
The officer didn’t look up from his task but it was clear that he was
referring to Jimmy and his friends, armed with baleful stares and hockey
sticks standing a dozen yards away.
Christopher McCarthy pointed out the graffiti, crude pictures of masked men
firing guns and praise for “the Weston Thugs”. “That’s my gang’s name. Well,
not a gang – we’re family. The pictures are drawn by kids, they see guns all
the time.” His brother, Anthony, is serving a life sentence for murdering a
member of the rival gang. He doesn’t hold out any hope of a bright future.
“The graveyard or jail,” he shrugged, before introducing 13-year-old Mark
Cronin, whose cousin James was tricked into digging his own shallow grave
before being dispatched, on the ground that he was allegedly about to turn
state witness after participating in another gang-related murder. James’s
friends had told him that they were going to bury guns.
Despite barely being a teenager, Mark adopted the same defiant stare and
hunched shoulders as the adults when he said that he wasn’t afraid of
anyone. “One day I’ll join the army,” he said.
Although Limerick does not try to hide its dark side it is weary of its
portrayal in the national press as a war-torn city. It has had to defend
itself in the past against the grim portrait drawn by its native exile Frank
McCourt in his bestselling memoir Angela’s Ashes.
A regeneration scheme began two years ago after Gavin and Millie Murray, aged
4 and 6, suffered horrendous burns when the car that they were in was
petrol-bombed by teenagers in the Moyross estate. Their mother had refused
to give the attackers a lift into the city centre.
The children spent six months in hospital and underwent 18 surgical
procedures. While the attack was not part of the feud it was the catalyst
for a scheme to rebuild Limerick’s four worst estates.
Upwards of 2,800 rebuilt homes will be built in the state’s costliest housing
project. Residents may have to obtain police clearance before being
allocated a home. Father Sylvester, a former US Marine-turned-Franciscan
monk who lives in Moyross with five other friars, detects resistance to the
plan.
“There’s supposed to be a truce here now, but some people have a vested
interest in not having this area regenerated. It’s their fortress, there’s
only one road in and one road out,” he said.
“It’s a vicious cycle, some are making a lot of money out of the misery of
others and things are going to get worse because there’s a lot of heroin
coming in. The estate has improved, however. You see the police a lot more,
the rapid response units cruising around.”
Reflecting on the sharply divided city, its patchwork of prosperous districts
sitting alongside shocking poverty, Father Sylvester wondered at the
reaction to the death of Mr Geoghegan. With shooting incidents running at a
high rate, it had only been a matter of time, he said. “But would it be any
less tragic if someone who wasn’t as innocent as he was hurt or killed? It
highlights the sanctity of life.”
Back in Ballinacurra Weston, the fiefdom of the Dundon/McCarthys, Mr Collins
took a different view. “It’s not about the drugs why this is happening. It’s
just that we hate each other’s guts. They don’t respect us so we’re not
going to respect them,” he said.
“This started with fists more than 20 years ago, it moved on to stabbings and
went from there to executions, people getting killed not because they’d done
anything but just to get at the families. I can’t see it ever ending.
“I took part in peace talks only weeks ago, I shook hands with the men who
tried to kill me. But that’s over. Only the funeral parlours will do well
out of this for years to come.”
Limerick life
90,757 Population
7 Murders and manslaughters (ranked 1st in Republic of Ireland)
30 Possession of firearms cases per 100,000 people (ranked 1st)
101 Firearms discharged (1st)
171 Drug dealing cases (3rd)
220 Assaults causing harm (3rd)
322 Police officers (5th) All numbers per 100,000 people.
Source: Central Statistics Office, Ireland
