Daniel Phillips
Mason was arrested within an hour or two of the shooting. Another man and a woman were also arrested but later released. The Limerick Leader noted the shooting on Daniel Phillips was on Mason’s 28th birthday.
Shane Mason, originally from Sean Heuston Place, has lived in Moyross in recent times. A cousin of Collopys, he’s been attacked twice in recent months by northside criminals.
On Friday night, 23 January last, Mason was shot on Kileely Road at about 10:15, when crowds were still leaving the Munster v. Northampton final pool game in the Heineken Cup. Mason, who was a passenger in a stationary car, received pellet wounds in the shoulder and head after two shots were fired from a shotgun by a gunman on foot. The female driver, apparently Mason’s girlfriend, drove the car to Hasset’s Cross where Gardaí were still on match duty. Mason’s injuries weren’t life threatening.
The next attempt on Shane Mason’s life was on 10 May. At around 11 that night, in Cathedral Place, a man in the rear of a blue carolla, fitted with a stolen taxi roof sign, fired once at Mason, missing him. The car was found burned out some time later in Patrickswell. Three men were arrested but not charged.
Gardaí advised Mason on his personal security but its now alleged he took matters into his own hands.
Shane Mason, who recently celebrated his birthday
Mason would not be particularly popular with local Gardaí. On 9 July 2004, Mason assaulted a Guard outside Limerick City Courthouse as the Guard tried to arrest him. A year later Judge Carroll Moran jailed Mason for 2 years for that offence and for escaping custody on the same date.
In October 2004, David Heighton, of Colmcille Street, St. Mary’s Park, initially identified Shane Mason as the gunman who inflicted serious injuries on his face and chest. The shooting had the hallmarks of another internal dispute within the greater Collopy-Keane gang. On 9 October 2004, in the early hours of a Wednesday morning, Heighton was shot near the shops on St. Ita’s Street, St. Mary’s Park, after an earlier altercation with a man. His injuries resulted in him becoming blind in one eye and losing a section of an ear. He had some 60 shotgun pellets removed from the side of his head and needed reconstructive surgery on his face. While Heighton’s initial statements to Guards unambiguously fingered Mason as the shooter, in court he insisted he wasn’t so sure. Under new legislation (the Criminal Justice Act, 2006), the State was allowed use Heighton’s earlier statements to Gardaí as evidence. Nonetheless, Mason was found not guilty by a unanimous vote of the jury.
The legislation that allowed Heighton’s original Garda statements insisting Mason shot him back in 2004 to be used in Mason's 2007 trial was based on legislation introduced in the wake of the collapse of Liam Keane’s trial for the killing of Eric Leamy in 2003, where widespread intimidation and ‘collective amnesia’ in the witness stand was suggested by the judge
Liam Keane
Heighton was not unfamiliar to Gardaí prior to his shooting. Aged 19, back in 1997, he was arrested for joyriding after a student Garda, John Keating tried to stop the stolen car Heighton was in on the Hyde Road, Prospect. The student Garda suffered a broken hip and collar bones. The other Guard on patrol was beaten by a mob as he attempted to arrest the suspects. Heighton was charged with taking a car without consent and driving without insurance.
In June 2004, just a few months before he was shot, Heighton was arrested after being caught drunk on the back of a crashed stolen motorbike on the Old Cork Road in the early hours with his friend, Liam Keane.
Shane Mason was remanded in custody by Judge Tom O'Donnell until 17 June.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment