The family of Thomas McCarthy who was shot dead by a gangland killer four-and-a-half years ago say they still do not know why he was murdered.
The 55-year-old lived and worked in England and was at his mother’s home in Ballyfermot, Dublin, on holidays when Cailean Crawford “executed” him on the doorstep.
The 28-year-old, who Judge Tony Hunt described as a perjurer and an assassin, was today jailed for life.
Thomas McCarthy’s mother Pauline described how her son fell back on her and died from gunshot wounds.
“He done it in front of me, I was there. I don’t know how I wasn’t killed,” she said.
“I went to the door with Thomas, and I thought it was bangers into the hall, the noise and the smell, what’s all that Thomas and he fell down on top of me. The pain will be with me till the day I die.”
Mr McCarthy lived in London with his partner of 31 years, Mia O’Reilly.
She said he was “a good man, an innocent man” who would “do anything for anybody”.
“Why we don’t know, we’ve been through hell,” she said.
“They took him away with no thought and they don’t even know why – he did nothing wrong – horrible – go home he’s not there – he’s changed our lives completely.”
The family thanked the gardaí, the judge and the jury for the verdict.
Mr Justice Tony Hunt said there were two travesties in the case.
The first was the assassination of Thomas McCarthy, a decent man and the second was “the brazen perjury” committed by Cailean Crawford “in an attempt to weasel out of his odious responsibility”.
In spite of Crawford’s suggestion that he had not received a fair trial, the judge said following independent analysis of the evidence, the jury came to “the only sane conclusion anyone could come to”.
“I’m glad they rejected matters put to them for Mr Crawford,” he said.
“The full facts show that to be nonsense”
He said people might take the view that because Crawford was seen a few hours after killing cheerfully delivering parcels in a normal manner that “he was normal person and not engaged in this grotesque outrage”.
“The truth is,” the judge said, that while “he appeared perfectly normal, he is prepared to engage in activities to snuff out the lives of other people”.
We need your consent to load this comcast-player contentWe use comcast-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Thomas McCarthy was a 55-year-old father and grandfather who lived in the UK with his wife and children.
He had returned to Ireland to visit relatives in Ireland in July 2020.
He was shot seven times at the front door of his mother’s home and died at the scene.
The gunman fled along with the other gang members and two cars and a van were subsequently found burned out.
Cailean Crawford, a man heavily involved in organised crime, was the gunman.
The 28-year-old took the stand during his trial and tried to claim he was only a drug dealer who had loaned his van to a man “with bones sticking out of his face” that day but was now being blamed, a claim rejected today in a unanimous verdict.
Crawford’s fellow gang member Charles McClean has already been convicted for his role in the murder and is serving eight and a half years for facilitating an organised crime group.
Crawford, along with McClean, was also involved in the attempted murder of gang member Wayne Whelan who was shot and seriously injured in September 2019.
Whelan survived that attack but was shot dead two months later.
