THE DAY he was shot and killed, Aidan O’Kane (50) and his son Dylan had decided that they were going to move from their home to escape the abuse they had been subjected to from local youths.
Yesterday, a teenager from the East Wall area where Mr O'Kane lived was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for seven years. Speaking on RTÉ's Livelinefollowing the court's decision, Dylan described how his father suffered an ongoing campaign of intimidation from teenagers he had once welcomed into his home.
“Aidan didn’t mind them smoking joints or having their beers in the house, but he got complaints from the neighbours and I think the guards told him once or twice that it wasn’t really appropriate, so he stopped allowing them to do that so things escalated,” Dylan said.
He said his father got to know young people in the area by fixing their bikes while he was working on repairing old cars, his source of income. However, while the teenagers waited around the house for their bikes to be repaired, Dylan said items began to go missing.
“It would be an iPod, a set of keys and it just got worse and worse, so Aidan, what he’d do is he’d ban some of them and try and find out who were the rotten apples of the group. They didn’t really take kindly to that.”
Once banned, some of the youths, aged between 13 and 18, began to throw eggs and fireworks at the house. They stole the family’s dog and burned one of Mr O’Kane’s used cars, said Dylan.
Eventually, Aidan succumbed to Dylan’s pressure and agreed to move house.
“We had decided on that day [of the killing] that we were going to move area,” said Dylan.
When their house was again bombarded with eggs, Mr O’Kane confronted the youths responsible.
“Aidan. . . was sick of it and he just wanted to get one and sort them out,” said Dylan.