A witness to the raid that resulted in the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe has described the horror of seeing the slain officer.
The highly-respected 41-year-old, who was based at Dundalk Garda station, was callously gunned down during the robbery of €7,000.
Pat Bellew was a volunteer at the Lordship Credit Union on January 25, 2013, and has described the moment he realised the dad of two was dead.
He recalled how he noticed a couple of people jump over a wall at about 9.45pm and one of them shouted: “This is a robbery.”
Mr Bellew was intimidated by the raiders and decided to give them the money and put up no opposition.
He told RTE One’s Prime Time: “So that’s what I did. I stopped the car.
“The next thing I knew, there was an enormous crack as somebody broke in the driver’s door window and the glass came in on top of me.
“He reached across me, his chest was here [directly in front of me]. He never touched me and I don’t think he was able to reach for the bag and not touch me.
"I believe he went round the car, opened the passenger door and took the money.
“I got out of the car to see what had happened.
“Now I didn’t see Adrian straightaway. It was only when I looked back and saw Adrian that it was clear there was nothing that could be done for him.
“So I didn’t do anything.”
Aaron Brady was yesterday found guilty of the capital murder of Detective Donohoe.
The special RTE programme, which will be broadcast at 9.35pm tonight, will also interview Jim Mancuso and Scott Crabb, both Homeland Security Investigations attaches based in London.
They co-ordinated Garda work which saw officers travel from Ireland to the Irish-American community in the Bronx and took statements from 68 people as part of the murder investigation.
