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Man shot dead at Dublin boxing bout weigh-in Dublin boxing weigh-in shooting death linked to gangland feud
(about 1 hour later)
One man has been shot dead and two others injured after gunmen opened fire during a weigh-in for a boxing bout at a Dublin hotel, police said. One man has been shot dead and at least one other was seriously injured after gunmen dressed as police officers opened fire during a weigh-in for a WBO European boxing match in Ireland on Friday afternoon.
Three men reportedly dress in police-style uniforms burst into the Regency Hotel in the Drumcondra district armed with what witnesses said were rifles that looked like AK-47s. The incident happened at the Regency hotel in north Dublin, which was packed at the time with boxing fans and supporters of the Welsh rugby team in the Irish capital ahead of the Six Nations clash with Ireland on Sunday.
Dozens of people who had gathered for the weigh-in of the WBO European lightweight fight fled the hotel when the men opened fire at 2.30pm. It is understood the targets of the attack were key members of a Dublin criminal gang run by a notorious Irish gangster who controls a drug smuggling empire from Spain’s Costa del Sol. The dead man was known by Gardai to be involved in organised crime.
The injured men, aged in their 20s and 30s, were taken to the Beaumont and the Mater Misericordiae University hospitals. Security sources said the chief suspects in the shooting at around 2.30pm are loyal to a rival gangland figure based in north Dublin. There are now fears that the shooting will spark a bloody north-side versus south-side gangland war in the Irish capital.
The fight’s promoters, MGM, had advertised the official weigh-in for the “Clash of the Clans” show at the Regency, on the main road to Dublin airport.. Gardai later said three men had burst into the hotel foyer around 2.30pm dressed, according to eyewitnesses, in “police-style uniforms”. Some reports suggested the gunmen wore fake high-visibility bibs with ERU printed on them, standing for “Emergency Response Unit” – the armed unit of the Garda Siochana.
The headline bout is on Saturday night between the Irish boxer Jamie Kavanagh and Antonio João Bento for the vacant WBO title. That fight, and another between Gary Corcoran and Danny Butler, is scheduled to be broadcast live on the Box Nation TV channel at Ireland’s National Arena in Tallaght, west Dublin. The Garda are investigating reports that the gunmen were also carrying Kalashnikov/AK47-style rifles when they opened fire at a number of men inside the hotel. Dozens of people fled in panic from the hotel when the shooting started, eyewitnesses said. The killers are reported to have escaped on foot through the grounds of a local Gaelic football club.
The Dublin fire brigade said it had dispatched two crews and advanced paramedics to an incident at a hotel in Dublin. The wounded were rushed to the nearby Beaumont and Mater hospitals in the north of the city but one of those who had been shot died shortly afterwards. At least one other man is said to be in a critical condition while three others, all in their twenties, were taken to the two hospitals with gunshot wounds. None are thought to be suffering from life-threatening injuries.
Box Nation, the television channel scheduled to broadcast the fight, said in a message on Twitter that the show had been cancelled due to the shooting. The shooting took place during the weigh-in ahead of Saturday’s boxing bout at the National Arena in the Tallaght area of west Dublin. Top of the bill was a fight between Jamie Kavanagh and Antonio Joao Bento for the vacant WBO European lightweight title.
“Following today’s incident at the Dublin weigh in, tomorrow’s show from the National Stadium has been cancelled,” the post said. This bout and another fight on a card the organisers MGM described as a “Clash of the Clans” were due to be broadcast live on the boxing channel Box Nation.
The bout was being promoted by Frank Warren and MGM Promotions, according to MGM, a Marbella-based gym run by Birmingham-born Irish boxer Matthew Macklin. Box Nation said in a statement on Twitter that the show has now been cancelled due to the shooting.
Two years ago, former European light-middleweight boxing champion Jamie Moore was shot twice in the legs in Marbella, where he was training Macklin at the time. “Following today’s incident at the Dublin weigh-in, tomorrow’s show from the National Stadium has been cancelled,” the post said.
The Press Association contributed to this report Shortly after the attack, Dublin fire brigade dispatched crews from both Finglas and Phibsboro in north Dublin as well as paramedics to the scene of the popular hotel, which is just off the main road from the city centre to Dublin airport.
They tweeted: “We’re responding to a serious incident in a hotel in Whitehall, crews from Finglas, P’boro + advanced paramedics.”
Irish detectives are now investigating a possible revenge motive for the hotel attack and the murder of a relative of a well-known north Dublin gangster in Spain last September.
Over the last 15 years, there have been around 200 gangland-style murders of rival criminals mostly in the Greater Dublin area with only a handful of convictions so far.