Many years ago I remember a front seat passenger being shot through the front window of a taxi when being dropped to his home. Anyone know anything about what happened to the driver afterwards? I remember that the car was impounded while the driver still had finance on it, and that when he got it back his mechanics found things in it that the guards had missed.
Taxi man says he's 'on scrapheap' after gangland shooting
JIM CUSACK
December 02 2007 04:47 AM
No one in Government or an Garda Siochana has contacted or offered any kind of assistance to the taxi driver and father of four young children who has been out of work since he was caught up in the assassination of the west Dublin criminal, John Daly, seven weeks ago.
Fran Kelly, 40, had his car taken from him for a period as evidence and, unable to work, is surviving on €397 a week in supplementary benefit. He is not entitled to unemployment benefit as he is self-employed.
Tomorrow, he and his wife are going into Dublin city centre to buy Christmas presents. "It won't be much but, thank God, the two youngest won't notice. They're only two and four months," he said.
Mr Kelly was sitting in the driver's seat when the masked gunman approached his car from the passenger side as he pulled up near Daly's home in Finglas and began pumping bullets into the drug dealer in the early hours of October 22. He continued shooting Daly as he fell across Fran, who survived only by what he describes as a miracle.
He said: "Someone was looking over me. My sister (who was only 34) died two years ago from a massive heart attack. I've often thought she was there for me that night looking down."
He said that after the shooting he was unable to leave the house for four days even to go to visit his mother who suffered a stroke last year and is wheelchair bound. "I eventually got up the nerve to leave the house. I had only spoken to my father and mother on the phone up to then. When I saw my mother she hugged me and wouldn't let me go. She hugged me for an hour and cried and wouldn't let go."
"At the moment I am still the same as I was. There is nothing happening, nothing going forward. I have heard nothing from the Minister for Justice, nothing from the Commissioner. Tommy Gorman (president of the National Taxi Drivers' Union) has been on to them two or three times a week but he's got nowhere at all. I'm left on the scrap heap.
"Christmas is the most important time of year for taxiing, from the 8th onwards when everyone comes up from the country. I don't have a car. I don't have a weekly wage. I'm on supplementary of €397 a week. You still have to buy baby formula and nappies for the babies. There is nothing. We are just surviving. Thank God there is nothing big coming from Santa, at least for the two young ones." His other children are aged seven and 10.
Unable to return to taxiing because of the trauma he suffered, Fran has been unable to keep up the payments on his car, which has been repossessed by the finance company and is due to be sold at auction. He has €21,000 in outstanding debt on the car which he fears will fetch only around €15,000 at auction, leaving him with the remainder in outstanding debt. He further fears that he will become a bad debt case and won't be able to borrow to buy another car.
He still relives the nightmare of the murder and is unable to sleep.
"I'm still not sleeping. I get annoyed and stay up, drinking tea and watching telly. If I go up earlier I can't sleep and I'm waking up the wife and children. It's not fair on them so I stay, sometimes to 6am. Then I'm up before 11.
"I don't want to be going on about this but I can't get it out of my head. I knew nothing about that fella (Daly). He was nothing to me but he came into my world. Nobody knows what it was like, the noise, the screaming of the girls. I was out of the car looking at this chap with blood pumping out of him.
"I was on tenterhooks for weeks. No one came to help us. I had to go to my own doctor and get my own counselling. The counselling is working. She has said put a brick wall between myself and it -- like it's on the other side of the wall."
During the murder, Fran didn't catch a single glimpse of the gunman, who gardai believe is a professional hitman hired by another Finglas-based criminal to murder his rival in the drugs trade.
Fran said he hopes to return to work in the New Year but he still isn't sure if he can return to taxiing. There are 17,000 taxi drivers in Dublin, including many immigrant workers, which has adversely affected takings. Before last month he had worked as a taxi driver for almost 17 years, following in his father's footsteps, who drove a taxi in the city for 35 years before retirement.
Tommy Gorman said yesterday: "I'm horrified at the way the State has treated this man. I think it's despicable. I've been on to the Minister for Justice's office but I've heard nothing. He did everything that was asked of him. He gave a statement to the guards and that was the last time he heard anything from them. This man's life has been nearly destroyed by this and no one in Government has done a thing to help him. It's a disgrace."
