Suspected petrol bomb attack on Garda station

MagicSean

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1120/mayo.html

Gardaí have arrested one man following what is believed to be a petrol bomb attack on Castlebar Garda Station in Co Mayo overnight.

A male in his 20s entered the station this morning at around 4am.

He threw what is believed to have been a petrol bomb in the public office of the garda station.

Two members of the Garda Siochanna were on duty at the time though nobody was injured.

Emergency services attended the scene.

The man was arrested a short distance away and brought to Westport Garda Station, where he is being detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.

This is just the most recent escalation in attacks against the emergency services yet for some reason there is very little press given to any of them. Even the Ballymun ambush on Halloween got very little. It wasn't too long ago that the GRA started a billboard campaign to highlight the danger of the job. I think the GRA and the unions should launch a similar joint campaign to highlight each an every attack suffered by the emergency services. Just wondering if people think this kind of campaign would be beneficial at all or do you think the last one was in any way effective.

msg11

Not the first time and the last one wasn't too long ago down in Wexford I think. Thankfully no one was injured, Garda or the public.

Your man will get some ridiculous sentence for this, what a moron.

Gardaí have arrested one man following what is believed to be a petrol bomb attack on Castlebar Garda Station in Co Mayo overnight.
A male in his 20s entered the station this morning at around 4am.
He threw what is believed to have been a petrol bomb in the public office of the garda station.
Two members of the Garda Siochanna were on duty at the time though nobody was injured.
Emergency services attended the scene.
The man was arrested a short distance away and brought to Westport Garda Station, where he is being detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1120/mayo.html

Lapin

I wonder what his motive was.

klong

EOD called to Gorey Garda Station last week, suspected pipe bomb

Turner

2 threads merged

Detained in Wesport garda station...

Not before a visit to the hospital.

WilcoOut

MagicSean wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1120/mayo.html



Even the Ballymun ambush on Halloween got very little.

.

do you have a link for this?

or did ya mean ballyfermot?

Delancey

Reminds me of the fire attack some years ago on Tallaght station where a Sergeant lost his life.
What happened to the attacker there ? As I recall his trial resulted in a hung jury ?

Raging_Ninja

Delancey wrote: »

Reminds me of the fire attack some years ago on Tallaght station where a Sergeant lost his life.
What happened to the attacker there ? As I recall his trial resulted in a hung jury ?

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/arsonist-convicted-of-killing-city-garda-326340.html

Guilty of manslaughter, 15 year sentence.

Arsonist convicted of killing city garda
By Liz Walsh and Diarmaid Mac Dermott

Wednesday November 14 2001

A MAN was jailed for 15 years by a judge at the Central Criminal Court yesterday after he was convicted of the manslaughter of a garda sergeant who died in a fire at Tallaght Garda Station over two years ago.

Daniel O'Toole is already serving a 15-year sentence for arson at the station on July 21, 1999 when Sergeant Andrew Callanan (37), a father of three, died.

Mr Justice Paul Carney ordered the 15-year sentence to date from the imposition of the arson sentence last July. At the end of the prosecution case yesterday defence counsel George Birmingham SC made an application, which Mr Justice Paul Carney accepted, that the evidence showed only an intent by O'Toole to commit suicide.

The judge then directed the jury to return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter and to enter verdicts of not guilty of the murder of a garda acting in the course of his duties and not guilty to a charge of simple murder. The penalty for the murder of a garda acting in the course of his duties carries an automatic 40 year's imprisonment.

At the beginning of his retrial last week O'Toole had pleaded not guilty to both murder counts but guilty to manslaughter but the State did not accept the plea.

A jury last June failed to agree on the murder charges against O'Toole but convicted him of arson.

O'Toole (38), of Cashel Avenue, Crumlin, Dublin was convicted of the manslaughter of Sergeant Andrew Callanan on July 21, 1999.

Jailing him for 15 years, Mr Justice Carney said that he had been convicted on the basis that his intent was to commit suicide. The judge said that suicide had ceased to be a criminal offence since 1993 and when it was legalised a large body of case law was set aside which included the consequences of taking someone else down at the same time.

Mr Justice Carney said that O'Toole would almost certainly, before 1993, have been convicted of capital murder. He said the court must have regard to the circumstances of the case and the most tragic fashion which took the life of a respected sergeant running a busy garda station in the middle of the night.

Pleading for leniency, O'Toole's counsel Mr Birmingham said that the 15-year sentence he had already received for arson was "a very substantial sentence".

He said that at the time of the offence O'Toole was "somebody who was at a very low ebb indeed" and who was in possession of syringes with chemicals and whose close associates thought he was likely to use to injure himself.

Mr Birmingham said his client was going to have to live with the consequences and was "truly and genuinely remorseful."

During the seven-day trial the jury heard that O'Toole walked into Tallaght Garda Station in the early hours of July 21, 1999 carrying two five litre canisters of petrol and two flares. He lit the flares and poured the contents of one of the canisters over the counter.

Sergeant Callanan rushed out with a fire extinguisher and pointed it towards O'Toole but he took the full blast of the fire and was pronounced dead at 5.31am.

O'Toole had fled from the scene to an address in Tallaght and gardai traced a 999 call asking if the gardai were alright to O'Toole's mobile phone. He was admitted to hospital and treated for burns and after his release on August 4, 1999 was charged in connection with Sergeant Callanan's death.

The accused's estranged wife Bernadette told the jury that the night before he set fire to the garda station, O'Toole had kissed his two children goodbye and told them they would never see him again.

"I was afraid he was so upset and angry and he might do something to harm himself," she said.

Sgt Callanan, a native of Thurles, Co Tipperary, had served at Tallaght for most of his 17 years in the force. He is survived by his wife Yvonne and three children, Stephen, and twins Jennifer and Sarah.

Zambia

How the f**k is the below related to the intention of committing suicide only

During the seven-day trial the jury heard that O'Toole walked into Tallaght Garda Station in the early hours of July 21, 1999 carrying two five litre canisters of petrol and two flares. He lit the flares and poured the contents of one of the canisters over the counter.

Plus why attend a Garda station could he not find a field or open space near Tallaght?

Words fail me