A YOUNG boy began screaming and running around after his mother’s partner was shot a number of times by a gunman standing outside the sitting-room window, an inquest has heard.
Lee Kinsella (30), Ratoath Avenue, Finglas, Dublin, died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen after a man opened fire into the sittingroom where Mr Kinsella was at home with his brother Kevin and his partner’s son Ryan (9) on May 8th, 2006.
Mr Kinsella sustained three gunshot injuries, one to his right ankle, one to his left arm and a third which went through his right wrist and re-entered his abdomen, causing fatal injuries.
Dublin County Coroner’s Court was told Mr Kinsella thought he heard someone coming through the gate and went to look out the window.
“I heard four or five bangs. I knew it was shots. Lee roared, ‘Kevin, Kevin’. He fell back on the ground. I know he was shot. There was blood everywhere,” Kevin Kinsella told the inquest. “Ryan was screaming and running around.
“I heard someone trying to push in the front door. I went to the front door and saw a dark silhouette of a fellow standing at the front door trying to push it in. I went to lock the door. A hand came in the broken glass panel to try and open the lock. This fellow was in dark clothes. He was all in black. I got the door locked and he ran off.”
When Pamela Joyce, Mr Kinsella’s partner, returned home after a visit to a friend, she found her sister Mandy in the garden, who told her Lee had been shot. “I ran inside and saw Lee lying on the sitting room floor with patches of blood around him,” Ms Joyce said in a statement read out in court.
“Kevin Kinsella was there with my son Ryan. I thought somebody had come after Kevin over some trouble he had got into. I didn’t believe somebody had meant to kill Lee because things had been so quiet over the trouble we – me and Lee – had with some people last year,” the statement said.
A postmortem by State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy found Mr Kinsella died from gunshot injuries to his abdomen.
Det Sgt Andy O’Rourke said a “huge” investigation ensued, but the Garda never procured enough evidence to recommend any charges. The Garda file remained open, Det Sgt O’Rourke added.
A jury returned a verdict of death by unlawful killing under the direction of coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty.