ONE OF nine Dumbrell siblings, Tommy, was involved in an altercation on a bus with Christy Cawley on October 29th, 2006, which resulted in a challenge to a fight that evening at 8pm.
That day, Mr Cawley and his wife Janette had gone into town with their eight-year-old son.
They returned at about 4.30pm, and about three hours later Mr Cawley left his flat at Tyrone Place in Inchicore and went to an area of open ground near the flats complex.
If he had expected to meet Tommy Dumbrell he was disappointed, as he did not turn up. Two of his brothers, Warren and Jeffrey, did, however, and they were armed.
It is likely Mr Cawley was frightened, as at about 8pm he was seen running back into the complex, pursued by two men.
He was right to be afraid.
Warren Dumbrell had 26 criminal convictions for assault, robbery, burglary and possession of firearms. His first was in 1987 for burglary. He was just 13.
Ten years later he gained national notoriety when he led a gang which held five prison officers hostage in Mountjoy jail. He held a blood-filled syringe to an officer’s throat.
“I have the virus since I was 15 years old. I don’t give a f***, I’ll make you drink my blood,” he told the officer. He was convicted of assault and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Jeffrey Dumbrell, who admitted stabbing Christy Cawley, had eight previous convictions resulting in jail sentences.
Their younger brother, Leroy, was at the centre of a walk-out of prison officers last year when he was transferred from Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon to Mountjoy’s separation unit.
Another brother has convictions for assault and was involved in a riot in St Patrick’s Institution in 2007 during which four prison officers were injured.
So when Christy Cawley met the two Dumbrells – who were armed with a hurley and a knife – he ran for home.
Unfortunately, he did not make it, stumbling at the bottom of the circular stairwell at the front of the flats.
Warren set about him with the hurley and Jeffrey stabbed him six times. He suffered three stab wounds to the back, one to the left hip and one to the back of each thigh.
The fatal blow was a 7-inch stab wound to the left thigh which severed an artery. He bled to death, despite the efforts of neighbours and the emergency services to save him.
The attack lasted less than a minute and was witnessed by several people, including his wife and three of their six children, Mairéad (16), Janice (14) and Lorcan, who was aged 5.
During the trial, Ms Cawley told the court she had seen her husband running from the two men. She screamed at him to keep running, but he fell before reaching the stairs and he was set upon. She grabbed a large plastic child’s car and threw it down at the men. It hit Jeffrey Dumbrell on the back.
“He looked up at me, I kept pleading with him to stop . . . he just put his head back down and continued what he was doing,” she said.
One of her daughters and her five-year-old son were also on the stairs and she screamed at them to get inside. “The men didn’t stop,” she said.