A brave taxi driver has told how he was shot in error in a brutal attack in Drogheda, Co Louth.
Innocent John Myles was driving two passengers when a masked shooter attacked him just metres from a garda station on the Bridge of Peace on Monday evening.
Mr Myles was not the intended target of the shooting and he appealed for the local feuding gangs to stop their warfare.
Speaking on The Michael Reade Show on LMFM, he told how the shooters cut his taxi off before jumping out of their vehicle and pointing a gun at him.
There was traffic all around him at the time and people walking nearby.
As the intended target fled the scene, Mr Myles, who is in his 30s and has been working as a taxi driver for 10 years, was shot in the back.
Speaking about the moment he was shot, he said: "Straight through the window. It was only one bullet. I'm here to tell the tale, thank God".
"I didn't know what to think. All that went through my head was the kids, just my kids is all I was thinking about, what would happen them.
"I didn't think about anything else. I didn't think about my car, I didn't care."
He paid tribute to the hospital staff at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and the local gardai who rushed to his aid.
"The hospital couldn't do .. enough", he said.
And he slammed the thugs who attacked him, saying he believed they had watched him pick up his passengers earlier in the evening.
"Obviously they were watching him being picked up, and knew he wasn't being picked up by any Joe Soap, it's a taxi man. We're out there doing a day's work."
He also told how easily other innocent bystanders could've been caught up in the shooting.
"To get out and point a gun and people walking down the footpath. There was innocent people walking up that footpath.
"There was a car behind me, a car in front of me.
"I was going to turn out on to the opposite side but I said 'no, quick thinking again, if I turn out there I'm going to cause an accident somewhere else'."
"I just said I'll take the brunt of it, hope for the best".
Mr Myles added that there are "certain places" he won't go to in Drogheda to get fares because "you don't know what's going to happen".
"There's places where I'll refuse to go and pick up", he said.
He added that he hesitated initially before going to pick up the passengers on Monday evening but decided to "take a chance".
Mr Myles added that he had come on-air to clear his name after malicious rumours were spread about him on social media.
He said: "It's wrong. It's totally wrong. It's an insult to me."
Mr Myles reiterated: "I've done nothing wrong. Only went out and did a day's work at 7 o'clock yesterday morning.
"And I'm here now today trying to clear my name because of something I didn't do, only pick up a customer."
"I have nothing to do with the drugs trade in any shape or form, it's completely wrong what people are saying online and it's my life that they are playing with, my kids' lives as well and it's not fair."
And he called for the spate of gangland violence in the area to end, saying: "They need to stop, just give it a rest and stop. Don't bring anyone else down with them. We didn't ask for this and we don't want it."
