There was no prior warning, no prior intelligence’ – leading garda recalls horror of rival gang feud at hotel
Two suspects in Dublin’s Regency Hotel shootings in 2016, one dressed as a woman, leaving the scene of the incident.
January 30 2021 02:30 AM
It was a dull Friday afternoon in early spring – February 5, 2016 – and Assistant Garda Commissioner Jack Nolan was in his office at Harcourt Square close to Dublin’s city centre.
Mr Nolan described that morning as “ordinary”. He was the senior garda manager in charge of policing in Dublin as well as the South East region at the time, also having a key role in Garda HQ. When a call came in shortly before 2.30pm that fateful afternoon, it was an event he will never forget.
A bloodbath had broken out at the Regency Hotel on the capital’s northside and Mr Nolan was informed of events by a senior officer in the Command and Control Centre. “What I realised pretty quickly was that this was an unprecedented retaliatory attack by a crime gang designed to kill as many members of a rival crime gang that they could,” now-retired Mr Nolan told the Irish Independent.