Gangsters tooled up with automatic handguns or sawed-off shotguns think only of exacting revenge or doing their boss’s bidding.
When the bullets or pellets smash into flesh and bone, causing horrific injuries, the gunmen have no concern for the hospital staff who have to deal with the aftermath, often carrying out emergency procedures to save a life.
A recent survey of gunshot wounds treated at the James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, west Dublin, set about establishing the impact they have on the hospital’s resources.
Taken from 2001 until 2010, they found 65 shooting victims were treated, 15 of whom died or were already dead on arrival.
But what the survey doesn’t say is that the start of the period covered coincided with the heyday of the Westies gang in west Dublin.
Led by Shane Coates and Stephen Suggs, the young hoods created havoc in the early noughties until they themselves were murdered and buried in Spain.
Violent feuding between gangs in Finglas on Dublin’s northside also accounted for several shootings and hospital staff had to treat the injured.
They also had to X-ray bodies for legal and ballistic reasons and to aid the task of retrieving the bullets from a dead victim’s body.
One of those who fell to a gangland assassin was Bernard Suggs, brother of Stephen, who was shot dead in the Brookwood Inn pub in the Corduff area of Blanchardstown, in August 2003.
CCTV footage of the killing showed three men in balaclavas going in to the crowded pub.
Suggs tried to escape by running through the pub towards an exit, with one of his killers pursuing him, firing at him as he fled and hitting him twice in the chest.
Although a minor player, Suggs was executed because of his brother, whose violent criminal career had created a lot of enemies.
Gardai found nine 9mm bullet casings in the pub, a type of ammunition that has been far more lethal than that used by shotguns.
The researchers at James Connolly found that 43 per cent of those shot with high-velocity bullets died, compared to just six per cent of those blasted with shotguns.
Just months after Suggs died, another associate, Jason Tolan, died from a gunshot wound, although in his case he was one of the six people who died from shotgun wounds covered by the study.
He had been shot in the leg by an attacker, later convicted of manslaughter, who had wanted to injure but not to kill him.
However, Tolan bled to death in a field before his body was discovered.
One of the saddest cases that researchers would have examined was the killing of teenage schoolboy Sumbo Owoiya in 2007.
In a subsequent trial, it would emerge the youngster was shot after a girl made false rape allegations against a completely different person.
Unfortunately, a man with criminal connections was drafted in to ‘sort out’ the situation and this resulted in innocent Owoiya being shot in the stomach.
Gang violence also heaped tragedy on another family when two brothers were shot dead within months of each other.
Andrew ‘Madser’ Glennon was shot and killed in April 2005. Later that August his brother Mark also died in a hail of bullets.
They had been linked to a drugs gang that was attempting to establish control of the deadly trade as the replacement to the Westies.
The role played by gangland violence was noted by the researchers, who stated that the shootings have been “widely attributed” to gangs and drug dealing.
Like the Westies, another infamous criminal made a telling contribution to the toll of victims treated at James Connolly Memorial.
Graham McNally died in 2009 on the orders of Eamon ‘the Don’ Dunne, after the infamous criminal became paranoid that people were leaking information to the Gardaí.
Dunne was also behind the shooting of Michael Murray in the same year. Murray (41) was shot dead outside his daughter’s house in Finglas.
In turn, Murray himself had added to the hospital’s list of casualties after being connected with the shooting dead of Ian Tobin in 2007 in a case of mistaken identity.
Although the researchers, whose findings were published in the Irish Medical Journal, said that gangland violence has added to the burden on the hospital, the level of shootings in Ireland is still low compared to other countries.
“Cook County Hospital in Chicago in 1995 showed 476 gunshot wounds over a 10-year period,” the authors wrote. “Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital, Durban, South Africa, examined 78 gunshot injuries in just six months. In both countries, gun ownership is less stringently controlled than in the Republic of Ireland.”
The report concluded: “There has been a sharp increase in the numbers of admissions from gunshot injuries in a West Dublin hospital in the Republic of Ireland in the past decade.
“Despite this, the numbers in Ireland are still low by comparison with other developed countries.”
