A jury has seen CCTV footage of the moment a man was shot 18 times with a sub-machine gun in the car park of a pigeon racing club.
The jury in the trial of Christopher McDonald viewed footage that gardaí say shows 36-year-old Keith Walker suffering the gunshot wounds that killed him.
Mr McDonald (34), from the East Wall area of Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to Mr Walker’s murder on June 12, 2015 in the car park of the Blanchardstown Pigeon Racing Club on Shelerin Road, Clonsilla. The trial has previously heard from State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy that the deceased suffered eighteen bullet wounds to the head and body.
Garda Patricia Davey today told prosecuting counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley SC that she compiled CCTV evidence gathered from the car park of the pigeon racing club, from a house and from a Lidl supermarket in Blanchardstown.
Describing the footage at the pigeon club, she said an individual can be seen near the entrance of the car park at about 4.20pm on the evening that Mr Walker was shot dead. An individual is seen five more times near a creche and other buildings in the area before Mr Walker arrives at 5.31pm, driving a dark-coloured car and travelling alone.
Gda Davey told the jury that at 6pm Mr Walker is seen chatting to an unknown male and one minute later an individual approaches and shoots Mr Walker after taking an item from a bag. She said the individual, who was wearing black clothes and runners and had long dark hair, then left the scene and ran away.
Footage gathered from a house on Sheepmoor Grove in Blanchardstown shows a person wearing a dark top and bottoms walking by eight minutes after the shooting. Five minutes after that, a person enters the Lidl car park wearing a dark top and dark, short, tight bottoms, black and white runners and carrying a light-coloured bag.
Detective Garda Gary McDonnell of the garda fingerprint section said he attended a laneway at Sheepmoor Grove on June 16, 2015 – four days after Mr Walker was shot. While there he said he found a transparent latex glove which he said was saturated in what appeared to be sweat. He said he found it near to where a bag, machine gun and wig were located at the same laneway.
Under cross examination Det Gda McDonnell told Bernard Condon SC that there was no garda in charge at the laneway. Mr Condon asked him why gardai did not also gather other items, including a Kinder Bueno wrapper, that were located near where the gun and latex glove were found. Det Gda McDonnell said the laneway was “covered in rubbish” with thousands of items that he did not think were of relevance. He said the lane appeared to be used as a dumping ground.
Mr Condon also asked him why a photograph taken at the scene claimed to depict “gloves” yet gardai had used only one glove in evidence. Det Gda McDonnell said he only took one latex glove and that he made a note of finding one latex glove at the time.
The trial will continue in front of Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of six men and six women on Monday.
