M50 Sniper

gimpotronitus

eh...anyone else confused about how much coverage this story is getting? I would have thought this would be major news but it does not even appear on rte news website. Excerpt of story in todays indo:

A MAJOR Garda manhunt was under way last night for a gunman who randomly shot a lorry driver on Dublin's M50 motorway and came within inches of killing him.

The sniper, who is thought to have hidden along an embankment or in a shrubbery adjacent to the busy two-lane road between Ballymount and the Red Cow, struck in darkness early yesterday morning.

According to sources close to the investigation the gunman fired a single round from a high powered rifle.

Although the calibre of the bullet was not being revealed by Gardai it is reliably learned it was higher than a .22

Trojan

http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=3219040

online.ie wrote:

Gardaí have appealed for information after a truck driver was injured when a shot was fired through the window of his cab.

The incident happened early this morning on the northbound carriageway of the M50.

Motorists who were on the road between Kingswood Castle and Western Parkway in Clondalkin between 1.45am and 2am this morning have been asked to come forward.

Hadn't heard of it - very surprising.

Winters

Saw something on the frontpage of the Herald yesterday on my way to the Dart station. Thats about it.

StupidLikeAFox

Im pretty sure there was a news report on TV3 (i think) that it was jus a pellet gun, and the pellet hit the lorry driver in the neck

fletch

Did I not hear that he struck again yesterday evening? I for one was nervous passing by the Tallaght & Ballymount exits this morning at 120kph

midget lord

Its a sign of modern society. 15 years ago this would have been headline news for days, today, its just another in the long list of serious incidents we see every week in this state.

The Muppet

ColHol wrote:

Im pretty sure there was a news report on TV3 (i think) that it was jus a pellet gun, and the pellet hit the lorry driver in the neck

That's some pellet, to go throug toughened glass and still do damage to the driver. It's called the mushroom syndrome. Keep joe public in the dark and feed us Sh**e .

I would be very reluctant to drive that stretch until this lunatic is caught apparently this has been going on for months.

Maximilian

Sounds like a bit of harmless fun to me.

Kernel

Maximilian wrote:

Sounds like a bit of harmless fun to me.

haha.. jeez, troller!

On topic, I heard it all over the radio, it was on the front page of the paper and TV3 news.. how much coverage do ya want??!

Maximilian

Kernel wrote:

haha.. jeez, troller!

Spoil my fun why don't you?

Trojan

Kernel wrote:

haha.. jeez, troller!

On topic, I heard it all over the radio, it was on the front page of the paper and TV3 news.. how much coverage do ya want??!

More than 3 minor articles?

(of the 5, 2 are dupes).
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&tab=wn&ie=ISO-8859-1&ncl=http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp%3Farticle%3D3219040&filter=0

Interesting that online.ie changed heads from
Truck driver shot with pellet gun on M50 motorway to
Truck driver shot on M50 today...

Wertz

It's a cunning ploy by dark forces working on behalf of the dept of transport, to lower the volume of traffic on that part of the M50 and stop all this craxy talk of buying the toll road and making it free.

whiskeyman

some weapons expert dude on TV3 news said this wasnt the work of a pellet gun, but more likely of a hunter rifle.
I presume the shot only grazed the drivers neck then, otherwise wouldnt a higer power rifle do serious damage?
The driver only had "minor injuries".
The story is probably being played down as it's coming up to the easter rush..... lots more traffic on M50 - they dont want people clogging up other routes.... or speeding in panic for that matter.
Nothing like the washington sniper incident a couple of years back thankfully!

Wertz

whiskeyman wrote:

some weapons expert dude on TV3 news said this wasnt the work of a pellet gun, but more likely of a hunter rifle.
I presume the shot only grazed the drivers neck then, otherwise wouldnt a higer power rifle do serious damage?
The driver only had "minor injuries".
The story is probably being played down as it's coming up to the easter rush..... lots more traffic on M50 - they dont want people clogging up other routes.... or speeding in panic for that matter.
Nothing like the washington sniper incident a couple of years back thankfully!

The thing about a rifle round is that it can travel a considerable distance and still carry enough momentum to do damage. If it had to pass through the windscreen of a lorry tractor, that would take a lot of kinetic energy out of the round.
Depending on how far away it was fired it might only have enough energy to puncture the skin but not cause an exit wound; exit wounds are the real damage dealers in a gunshot injury.
As for the story being played down I heard it in headlines on every news bulletin on either 98fm or 104fm the last 2 days...

FX Meister

I didn't think it got much coverage. I read it in some tabloid yeasterday but it didn't say whether it was a rifle or a peller gun. I figured if it was a pellet gun then perhaps the fact that he was travelling at a high speed towards the pellet may be the reason it went through the windscreen?

fred funk }{

I heard today that i could have been an accident, If someone was shooting fox or rabbits a few fields over and missed the bullet would carry on.
Any experienced hunter wouldnt let this happen as they would always make sure that there was a bullet stop behind their target like a hill or something.

fred funk }{

By the way it was NOT a pellet gun. The bullet went right through the windscreen and back out the cab.Even a .22 rifle wouldnt have the power to go through a windscreen. They reckon it was a hunters rifle for shooting dear or like.

Wertz

Hunting with a rifle at 2-3am in an urban area sounds a bit like a euphenism for criminal activity to me.

My scenario: a few lads buy/find/steal a .22 and decide to go out and have some "fun" at all hours of the morning.
Lad 1 "Jaysus...I know what'd be a great laugh...let's try to pop the tyres on a lorry!"
Lad 2 "Rapid...it'll be loike GTA...and maybe the lorry will crash and a crate of plasma TVs will fall out the back of it!"
Lad 3 " Baaaaaaa-NG"
Lad 1 "Ya fuggin' missed, ya prick...here gimme a go..."

gurramok

ColHol wrote:

Im pretty sure there was a news report on TV3 (i think) that it was jus a pellet gun, and the pellet hit the lorry driver in the neck

Yeh and the driver ends up on a trolley in Tallaght hospital, wonderful country to treat injured people !

Shame on RTE for not mentioning this incident.

KdjaCL

He lay in the field beside Kingswood its obviously Lenny bored no animals to terrorize or parents to walk in so he decided to start going all GTA on the M50.


kdjac

Kernel

Trojan wrote:

More than 3 minor articles?

(of the 5, 2 are dupes).
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&tab=wn&ie=ISO-8859-1&ncl=http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp%3Farticle%3D3219040&filter=0

Interesting that online.ie changed heads from
Truck driver shot with pellet gun on M50 motorway to
Truck driver shot on M50 today...

yeah, but there is more to the world of media than the internet my friend. Most people in Ireland don't even use the internet. If it's on primetime news on TV and the front page of Dublin's biggest daily then that's hardly lack of coverage. Your point may be aimed more towards ****ty news coverage of ireland on the web, which is a fair point indeed. RTE is normally ok for Irish news, but sometimes the stories they decide to cover can be strange enough.

Wertz, lol btw, and you are right, that is probably how it happened.. either that or some psycho out there wants to cause a bit of mayhem. Some guys go out to hurt people and destroy things just to get back at 'the man', and are more dangerous than the skangers.

stagolee

KdjaC wrote:

He lay in the field beside Kingswood its obviously Lenny bored no animals to terrorize or parents to walk in so he decided to start going all GTA on the M50.


kdjac

my god he's worked it out! these deductive powers can only mean one thing, kdjac is actualy kojac the t.v. detective hiding under a cunning pseudonym

Trojan

Kernel wrote:

yeah, but there is more to the world of media than the internet my friend. Most people in Ireland don't even use the internet. If it's on primetime news on TV and the front page of Dublin's biggest daily then that's hardly lack of coverage. Your point may be aimed more towards ****ty news coverage of ireland on the web, which is a fair point indeed. RTE is normally ok for Irish news, but sometimes the stories they decide to cover can be strange enough.

Wertz, lol btw, and you are right, that is probably how it happened.. either that or some psycho out there wants to cause a bit of mayhem. Some guys go out to hurt people and destroy things just to get back at 'the man', and are more dangerous than the skangers.

Disagreed kernel: Irish news stories get picked by hundreds of affiliates. Currently 53,000ish news stories (many, many duplicates) relevant to Ireland.

I use the web as 80% of my news source, the rest from NT 106, SkyN, RTE TV, BBC TV. The top stories from each source, ignoring local bias, are generally very similar.

I find it strange that this particular story has almost no web coverage. I'm not claiming a conspiracy.

Mercury_Tilt

This post has been deleted.

Trojan

Kernel wrote:

Most people in Ireland don't even use the internet

According to a Joint National Internet Research survey, via Silicon Republic, 38pc of Irish adults [were] online in 2004 compared with 33pc in 2003. I don't have figures for 2005, and also according to that survey "Approximately 21pc of Irish people, some 656,000 people, use the internet on a weekly basis".

So "most" being the other 62pc, minus those who've converted in the last year, you're possibly technically correct.

The_B_Man

did it say which side of the M50 the shots were fired from?

Kernel

Trojan wrote:

According to a Joint National Internet Research survey, via Silicon Republic, 38pc of Irish adults [were] online in 2004 compared with 33pc in 2003. I don't have figures for 2005, and also according to that survey "Approximately 21pc of Irish people, some 656,000 people, use the internet on a weekly basis".

So "most" being the other 62pc, minus those who've converted in the last year, you're possibly technically correct.

Thanks Trojan. I reckon i am more than technically correct, as even the dubious results of that poll show that the majority don't use it on a regular basis - certainly not regularly enough to get news. If you want the news, buy a newspaper!

Unless you want world news, in which case www.bbc.co.uk is your only man.

In fairness to the emerald isle, www.ireland.com was good for news, until they started charging.....

EDIT for grammar!

KdjaCL

The_B_Man wrote:

did it say which side of the M50 the shots were fired from?

Kingswood side just behind the Luas station big emtpy field stretching to Kingswood and Lennys house.


kdjac

Haket

>By the way it was NOT a pellet gun. The bullet went right through the >windscreen and back out the cab.Even a .22 rifle wouldnt have the power to >go through a windscreen. They reckon it was a hunters rifle for shooting >dear

What cack, a .22 round will go through a 2-3 inch wood batton at close range, it's certainly pass through a flat (wrt the shooter) windscreen travelling toward it at 90-110kph. The hole in the windscreen (judging from the pics I've seen) is far bigger than .22 but thats NOT indicitive of the caliber used.

I'd not drive a truck at speed toward a high power air rifle (12joule muzzle energy) pellet either. The ballistics will show where the shot came from, and from what is was fired quite accurately.




>The thing about a rifle round is that it can travel a considerable distance >and still carry enough momentum to do damage. If it had to pass through >the windscreen of a lorry tractor, that would take a lot of kinetic energy out >of the round.
>Depending on how far away it was fired it might only have enough energy to >puncture the skin but not cause an exit wound; exit wounds are the real >damage dealers in a gunshot injury.

While that possible true, it'd be a one in a million fluke occurance, the bullet would have had to been fired over 1000+ meters away in order to have lost that kind of energy and at that range I cant see even hittin the truck being a possiblilty.

segadreamcast

I check the news on Aertel (eh...) every few hours... nothing about it there. This is the first I've heard about it - nothing in the Irish Times either, unless I'm going blind?

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

fletch

Silver Knight wrote:

I heard today that i could have been an accident, If someone was shooting fox or rabbits a few fields over and missed the bullet would carry on.
Any experienced hunter wouldnt let this happen as they would always make sure that there was a bullet stop behind their target like a hill or something.

Didn't it happen around Ballymount & Tallaght? I don't know of any fields around there where you could go fox or rabbit hunting. Its a highly industrialised area.

KdjaCL

fletch wrote:

Didn't it happen around Ballymount & Tallaght? I don't know of any fields around there where you could go fox or rabbit hunting. Its a highly industrialised area.

The field there is fekkin huge.

X is where he was other X is Lennys gaff , coincedence?


http://members.boards.ie/kdjac/image.asp.gif

kdjac

LoneGunM@n

Now I'm sh!tting myself about driving home this afternoon

L5

KdjaC wrote:

X is where he was other X is Lennys gaff , coincedence?


http://members.boards.ie/kdjac/image.asp.gif

kdjac

Rew

whiskeyman wrote:

some weapons expert dude on TV3 news said this wasnt the work of a pellet gun, but more likely of a hunter rifle.

He was a ****in clown, TV3 just listed him as a "Security Expert" with no other info. He reckoned it was a military fiifle or a hunting rifle and mentioned 5.56mm as mill and 7.62mm and Hunting, as if thats the only calibers that exist. TV3 should be banned from haveing a news program if they are going stick on such ****e.

Drivers injurys may have had nothing to do with the what hit his windscreen, and It could ave been anything including a ball bearing, ill be waiting for something offical and not "maky uppy news" from TV3.

gandalf

Heres an article (requires registration) from todays Indo about it.

It was a .22 rifle or larger that was used.

Truck driver shot by random sniper has serious eye injury

THE truck driver shot by a sniper as he drove along a motorway on Wednesday suffered a serious eye injury in the random attack.

Patrick Roche, in his 50s, from Ballymoney, Kilbride, Co Wicklow, was hit in the neck by a bullet fired by a gunman between 1.45 and 2am on Wednesday morning as he drove North on Dublin's M50.

Gardai say Mr Roche was lucky to survive the shot which came within a fraction of an inch of killing him. But doctors are now more worried about the splinters of glass from the windscreen which lodged in one eye. Despite the seriousness of his injuries, he is said to be in "good form".

Detectives plan to interview all holders of licensed firearms of .22 calibre and higher who live in the Clondalkin and Tallaght areas.

Gardai are not revealing the type of bullet fired. It is thought it could be more powerful that that used in a standard .22 rifle.

Throughout yesterday gardai were carrying out intensive searches of the Ballymount to Red Cow area where the sniper struck.

Last night Mr Roche was in a ward in Tallaght Hospital after spending the previous day lying on a trolley.

His wife Frances said: "There are lots of people on trollies. There are people there worse off than him . . .the way I look on it is that we are lucky to still have him."

Gardai have appealed for anyone with information to phone them on 01 666 7600.

Frank Khan and
Charlie Mallon

Caesar_Bojangle

KdjaC wrote:

He lay in the field beside Kingswood its obviously Lenny bored no animals to terrorize or parents to walk in so he decided to start going all GTA on the M50.

The Tallaght Sniper. It all makes sense now.

The_B_Man

jesus christ, im from kilnamanagh and didnt even hear anything bout this. i know that place well. i usually go huntin wit me .22, sure i was there wedne........wait a minute!

just asked me da. he said he heard bout it and thinks whoever did it was either on the bridge (unlikely) or probably on top kingswood castle.

Puck

LoneGunM@n wrote:

Now I'm sh!tting myself about driving home this afternoon

Irony.

The_B_Man

haha

by the way, do u honestly think he's gonna return to that spot with all the guards sniffin around?

the_syco

KdjaC wrote:

Kingswood side just behind the Luas station big emtpy field stretching to Kingswood and Lennys house.


kdjac

Which is weider; you know exactly where the sniper was, or where Lenny's house is? :rolleyes:

=-=

Notices Lenny hasn't said anything yet...

Morpheus

He just struck again, read front page of Todays Herald.

Ciaran500

Post some info since we can't all get to a newspaper?

Nothing on breakingnews.ie about it.

Wertz

Where the hell did those two years go?

InFront

I just read this entire thread thinking there was some big drama going on that I hadn't heard about... in 2007. Bye bye study break.

KamiKazi

wow, thats a hell of a bump right there

Dyr

Bet it's that garda with a shotgun :eek:

Fizman

InFront wrote:

I just read this entire thread thinking there was some big drama going on that I hadn't heard about... in 2007. Bye bye study break.

Haha me too. Some bump alright.

Morpheus

I cant get it on the net, its only in the herald ( sorry bout the speed bump but if its true, it could cause more traffic chaos on the m50 alteratives if people start avoiding the motorway. maybe thats why the govt havent said much about it?

copacetic

confirmed i saw this on front of paper too, someone shot the roof of a guys car?