THE MOTHER of murdered Limerick man Shane Geoghegan has appealed to members of the public who may have information about her son's murderers to assist the Garda's investigation into the fatal shooting.
Mary Geoghegan and the murdered man's partner, Jenna Barry, spoke on last night's RTÉ Crimecall programme of their shock at hearing of his murder in Kilteragh, Dooradoyle, in the early hours of last Sunday week.
Ms Geoghegan said gardaí had come to her on the morning of the killing and told her there was a possibility the deceased was her son.
"My immediate response was that it couldn't be Shane, there was no way he could be in the way of anything that would cause him to be killed. They said it was as a result of a shooting."
She said, as her first-born child, Shane was "a great joy obviously".
"He always had his arm around his sister, his brother, even his friends. He always had the arm around them, even though he's sort of the real macho type. He had a beard when he was 14, you know - we had to get him an electric razor for his 14th birthday."
Ms Barry said she had known Shane since she was 14. She said he was a "great guy, loving, caring, listened . . . all the time, listened a bit too much maybe".
She said the spot where he was killed was just beside their home.
"I look out my front door and I know he was only there, 30 seconds away," she said. "One of the bad days was actually the day that he got buried and he would've always been there to support me, and he wasn't. So it's going to be really tough without him.
"He's not going to be there to enjoy the good times with me and he's not going to be there to pick me up when the bad times are there, and this was a time when, if it had been anyone else, he would've been there."
Anthony Geoghegan, the dead man's brother, said they both played for the same team at Garryowen rugby club. "We had the last game three or four weeks ago and I only got 10 minutes on the pitch and he got sin binned."
Gardaí believe Shane Geoghegan's murder is linked to an ongoing feud between two Limerick gangs which has cost 14 lives in eight years. Detectives are working on the theory that the gunman was sent to kill a member of one of the gangs, but mistook Mr Geoghegan for the intended target and shot him instead.
A team 40 to 50 detectives are investigating and about 20 houses were searched last week in Dublin, Cork and Limerick.