Iâd actually agree with @Fulvio_From_Aughnacloy in thrust here. Guns rarely seem to improve a situation.
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They are a necessary evil. Has a guard ever been killed with his own gun before?
It only happens on average 4 times per year in the US where a few hundred cops per year are killed.
A couple of cops have offed themselves with their own gun
Thatâs a whole other conversation, but youâd imagine theyâd have found another way if they hadnât a gun.
This was a bizarre set of circumstances.
WEXFORD hurling legend Ned Wheeler has spoken of how he unknowingly harboured the man who murdered his team-mate, Detective Garda Seamus Quaid, on the night he was gunned down.
In the new RTE series, Garda Ar Lar, Mr. Wheeler told how the gunman came to end up in his home the night Garda Quaid â a colleague of his on the 1960 AllIreland Hurling Championship winning team â was killed.
Garda Quaid was killed by IRA man Peter Rogers on October 13, 1980, at Ballyconnick quarry, a murder which was the focus of the Garda Ar Lar programme last Monday night.
Rogers shot Garda Quaid after he was stopped at a routine night-time checkpoint and explosives were found in the back of his van. A second Garda, Donal Lyttleton, survived the attack.
Rogers arrived at Mr. Wheelerâs home later that night, saying he had crashed his car and needed a bed for the night.
âA knock came on the door and a man appeared who I knew through his father-inlaw and he said he had an accident in the car,â said Mr. Wheeler. âI said Iâd bring him home, but he said he was okay⌠and we gave him a bed.â
Mr. Wheeler told RTE how he believed the story of the local man until he woke up the next morning and heard the news.
âThe next morning I heard Seamus Quaid was shot and then the guards came up here and it was the man we had harboured,â said Mr. Wheeler, who persuaded Rogers to give himself up to the GardaĂ.
âIt cast an awful lot of doom and gloom over the whole county. He was a hurling friend of mine and it should never have happened,â said Mr. Wheeler.
'It was a smaller-knit town then than now. I suppose for a while there was a bit of ill feeling. But it wasnât our fault. There is no country worth that bloodshed. It was sad to see a young man of his ability and his prowess going down like that doing his duty.
âSometime afterwards, a lovely gentleman, Superintendent Jim Doyle, came down and said to me that they knew I was completely innocent of the whole thing,â said Mr. Wheeler.
At the time of the killing, Rogers was using his vegetable van to move IRA arms and explosives.
In 1998 he was released from prison, under the Good Friday Agreement, after serving 18 years of a 40 year sentence. A native of Belfast, he had been living in Wexford for six years before the shooting.
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Thatâs not relevant to this debate
Alternatively they may not have done it had they no access to a firearm in that instant
Like I said, a whole other conversation. Youâre now discussing the mind of a suicidal person.
Interesting. Probably a difference in approach there that we can debate some other day.
I remember the father saying that to me, that it must have been awkward when the 1960 Wexford team was introduced to the crowd at the 1985 All Ireland. Seamus Quaid was represented by one of his children
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Itâs very sweet that this poor Garda getting shot has thrown the whole country into mourning and outrage, where else would you get it.
Anyone seen GODâs take on this? Sheâs a nasty individual. Imagine being her neighbour.
One of those weirdo biker/heavy metal freaks.
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I see John Casey is vocal about this and how he knows the family, spoke to the Dad yesterday, etc etc.
Some bollox.
Hardly odd for RTĂ to contact a contracted employee to discuss his clubmate.
I didnât say it was odd.
I said Casey was a bollox.
Thatâs a bit harsh. I heard him on radio and he seemed genuinely upset. Said he was best friends with horkans brother and had played on underage teams with the deceased.
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Why is he a bollox?