A DUBLIN woman says the INLA has killed her son, threatened to kill herself and her other children and has launched several petrol bomb attacks targeting the family home and shop.
Widow and mother of six Carmen Egan believes the campaign of violence from the INLA in Dublin is linked to the shooting dead of 32-year-old Wayne Doherty in Hartstown, west Dublin, last July.
One of Carmen Egan’s sons has recently been charged in relation to the Doherty killing. Robert Egan (26), Dromheath Avenue, Mulhuddart, Dublin, is charged with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Ms Egan said two of her other sons – she has five sons and one daughter – have been in hiding abroad for months because they fear they will be shot dead if they return to Dublin.
One of her sons, Jason (23), was shot dead last October as part of the campaign being waged against her family.
Two cars and two vans owned by the family have been destroyed in petrol bomb attacks outside the family home in Mulhuddart in the past two months. An attempt was also made to burn down the family’s newsagent’s shop close to their home last month.
Ms Egan said the campaign of intimidation and violence has been waged against her family because her son Robert has been implicated in the Doherty killing.
Her other sons are in no way suspected of involvement in Mr Doherty’s murder. However, she says the INLA are trying to threaten them into supplying information about a friend of her son Robert.
That man is also a suspect for the Doherty killing but has left Ireland. Robert Egan had also been abroad but returned home earlier this month and was charged.
Ms Egan has called for gardaí to protect her family but said she is too afraid to make a formal statement of complaint to the force about the men now targeting her.
“They killed my son Jason so now they’re going on to the next brothers. If they take the next brother are they going to go on to the next brother? When is it going to stop?”
Mr Doherty, a 32-year-old father of two, was shot dead on the street close to his parent’s home at Oakview Way, Harstown, west Dublin, on July 4th last.
A man known to Mr Doherty had become involved in a row in a pub at a christening earlier in the day.
He left the pub and went home but feared his house was about to be attacked.
He contacted Mr Doherty for help. Later that night two cars pulled into Oakview Way. Mr Doherty walked over to one of the cars to challenge the occupants. However, one of the men produced a shotgun and shot Mr Doherty dead.
Gardaí believe associates of Wayne Doherty’s are in the INLA and have now taken it upon themselves to avenge his death.
Ms Egan said that not long after Wayne Doherty was killed her sons began receiving threatening phone calls. She said her son Jason eventually went to meet the INLA about the matter.
“They had the meeting outside Blanchardstown Garda station at 12 o’clock one night. Jason was asked who was at the murder of Wayne Doherty and told that if he was telling lies he was going to be shot.” She said Jason – who gardaí have confirmed to The Irish Times was in no way involved in Mr Doherty’s killing – told the men at the meeting he knew nothing about Wayne Doherty’s murder.
However, on October 23rd last when he was locking up one of his two newsagent’s shops at Ladyswell Road, Mulhuddart, a gunman approached Jason Egan and shot him dead.
Ms Egan says two of her other sons, Anthony (24) and Lee (19), have spent almost all of the time since their brother’s murder in hiding abroad, where they are still regularly receiving threatening phone calls from the INLA in Dublin.
“They are innocent, they had nothing to do with it ,” Ms Egan said.
She added that late last year they were told they were safe to return to Ireland but that it soon became clear they were not safe here.
“Anthony was in Belfast when he was followed all the way by the INLA. They were able to tell him every move, what he was doing and what he was buying in the wholesalers for the shop.”
They left Ireland again and save for a two-day trip home by Anthony for a funeral, both have remained abroad for the past five months.
Ms Egan said her son had been informed by the INLA he was lucky to be alive after the funeral and that he would have been shot in a pub after the burial if gardaí had not come to patrol the area.
She added that the INLA had informed her sons that the family shop, where she and her 19-year-old daughter work, would be “blown up”.
“They said they wouldn’t care who was in the shop at the time, that everything else until now was just a warning.”