Carthy provoked gardai to shoot him, says psychologist

BARR TRIBUNAL: The best negotiator in the world could not have changed Mr John Carthy's plans to be killed by the hands of the gardaí at Abbeylara, Co Longford, in April 2000, a forensic psychologist has told the Barr tribunal.

Dr Ian McKenzie, who has lectured British police forces in hostage negotiations, said he was "in no doubt" that Mr Carthy deliberately provoked the gardaí to shoot him when he left his house carrying a loaded gun.

Nothing would have diverted Mr Carthy from this course of action at the end of the 25-hour siege and the gardaí had "no alternative but to open fire on him" when they did, he said.

"If there is someone in this world who is considered the best negotiator put on the face of the earth they still wouldn't have been successful."

He said he did not believe Mr Carthy had planned the siege, but that the plan to provoke gardaí to shoot him developed during the course of the 25 hours.

The 27-year-old, who suffered from manic depression, had made a number of attempts to get gardaí to shoot him while he was still in his house. He had stood at the window calling for gardaí to shoot him. He had asked gardaí to "come on in and get me", and he had shouted abuse calling them "Free State bastards".

These attempts to goad the gardaí were "naïve" and unsuccessful, Dr McKenzie said. "At that point he had to do something else and the something else was to come out, to ensure the outcome that he wanted to occur."

However, the gardaí at the scene had no clear understanding of the nature of Mr Carthy's illness and did not make sufficient inquiries of his family from the outset of the siege, Dr McKenzie said. The gardaí had been informed of his illness from an early stage but had failed to adequately explore what effect the illness would have on him, he said.

There was an absence of adequate records of the questions asked of the Carthy family and the information they gave. The expertise of Mr Carthy's psychiatrist should also have been sought.

"Information should have been obtained from the therapist involved and the information from the family should have been more substantial." The family should have been asked how they dealt with his bouts of mania and depression, he said.

"This does not seem to me to have been part of the intelligence-gathering strategy. There was no individual processor, the information was randomly fed into the system and the quality of it was not necessarily the best."