EXCLUSIVE | 

Pint blank: Driver for Dublin gangland hit team joins mates for ‘celebratory’ drink after shooting

Gardaí painstakingly retrace gangster’s movements from the moment he fled the scene of assassination attempt

Today at 07:26

This is the dramatic moment a gangland shooter fires at his intended target before his getaway driver calmly gets into a taxi and joins his mates in a pub for ‘celebratory’ pint.

Gardaí were able to track down Limerick getaway driver Alan Graham after painstakingly re-tracing his movements across Dublin following the attempted murder of Lee Boylan on March 6, 2019.

Boylan was previously an associate of a number of members of the Gucci Gang, including the Finglas criminal ‘Mr Flashy’.

He was also a close friend of drug-dealer Sean Little who was murdered as part of the so-called Coolock feud.

Just weeks after Boylan was shot his father, Noel, also narrowly escaped with his life after he was shot in a supermarket.

Viewers of a new season of Virgin Media’s The Guards will initially hear frantic callers telling a 999 operator of a shooting in Blanchardstown.

TV and radio broadcasts tell how officers rushed to a shooting in the Priorswood area of Blanchardstown in west Dublin, where a man in his 20s “known to Gardaí” was treated at the scene for gunshot wounds after “being targeted while he sat in a van”.

“Once a call like that comes in you know that you have people who are trying to get away from the scene of an incident – so you’re looking at the best opportunity in how we can beat them leaving that scene,” explains Detective Inspector Thelma Watters.

Her colleague Detective Sergeant Shane McCartan adds: “When the call comes in we get to the scene. You’re listening out, you’re anticipating a car being burned out somewhere else.”

Reports then came in of a car on fire in Sadler’s Grove and a unit was dispatched, with the operator saying there may be a link to the shooting in Priorswood.

“There’s evidence to be found there, so you’re looking at getting to the scene, preserving any evidence that’s available,” notes Det Sgt McCartan. “Where’s the evidence going to lead you from there. You’re looking at CCTV, you’re looking for witnesses, you’re appealing for assistance from the public.

“In gangland crime, very often it can be difficult to progress, because there are a number of motives. Generally, the people who are killed have a lot of enemies.”

Det Inspector Watters explains “that everything was on the table in this investigation because initially you don’t have an early success around arresting somebody fleeing from the scene or at the scene, I’d say you’re considering all your strands.”

Det Sgt McCartan points out: “You have a driver, you have a gunman, and you probably have other people who are involved in the logistics behind the crime in the first place, so you’re thinking of lots of things to coordinate people and gather evidence.

He then goes into the method used in the shooting.

“The gunman got out of the car and fired three shots that struck Lee Boylan in the neck,” he reveals. “Those bullets are still in his neck, they are too close to the spine to remove.

“What actually happened, a vein and artery of his neck joined and stemmed the flow of blood. But it was just a miraculous piece of medical luck that he’s still alive.”

According to the detective, there was also a lot of planning involved in the hit.

“It was carefully planned out,” he confirms. “There was a bit of surveillance conducted. There were numerous people involved.”

But the tide soon turned for the investigating officers.

“Ultimately in this case it was CCTV that gave us the strength of evidence,” Det Inspector Watters confirms.

Det Sgt McCartan recalls that they soon identified Alan Graham as a suspect in the shooting.

“We picked up Alan Graham leaving Sadler’s estate quite soon after the BMW was burned out and we followed him, observed him getting into a taxi in Mulhuddart and getting dropped over to Finglas,” he recalls.

“The taxi driver noted when he was interviewed at an early stage the smell of smoke from his clothing, obviously as a result of him setting the car on fire.

“I suppose we had suspects in mind from an early stage. The CCTV evidence in Finglas led us to other areas in the wider Dublin area, which resulted in us searching their dwellings and affecting a number of arrests.”

In follow-up searches carried out in Limerick and Dublin on premises linked to the gang who ordered the hit, about €20,000 in cash was discovered in various stashes, with a woman who was searched in a house found to be concealing €8,000 in her arm pit.

A torn open Coca Cola can was also found partly buried in a nearby field which contained a waterproof cannister, which appeared to have a ‘tick list’ of names of people and dates and what they seemingly owed for drugs.

Other evidence acquired and relevant to the investigation included phones and car seats.

Alan Graham was identified by gardaí in Limerick and he was arrested in June that year, and is seen on footage being brought in for questioning into Blanchardstown Garda station, where he was charged with Lee Boylan’s attempted murder.

“Dealing with Alan Graham, he asserted that initially he had no contacts in Dublin, that he hadn’t been in Dublin in a lengthy period of time, that he had no involvement in the shooting, didn’t know who Lee Boylan was,” recalls Det Sgt McCartan.

But CCTV footage showed Graham getting into a taxi after the shooting and going to a pub, where he had ‘celebratory’ pints.

“To see him minutes after trying to take someone’s life, going into the pub, high-fiving, drinking a shot of whiskey and having a pint, discussing the aftermath of a shooting of someone, it was hard to fathom,” says Det Sgt McCartan.

Graham (49), of Davin Gardens, Cahirdavin, Limerick, pleaded guilty to participating in activities with the intention of facilitating the commission by a criminal organisation of the offence of attempted murder of Boylan (26) at Blakestown Road, Mulhuddart, Dublin 15 on March 6, 2019.

Graham had 20 previous convictions here, mainly for drug-related offences and one Canadian conviction for selling stolen passports.

He was caught in 2010 with €750,000 worth of cocaine and €200,000 in cash and jailed for 10 years. Mr Justice White sentenced Graham to 11 years imprisonment with the final year suspended, backdated to June 17, 2019 when he went into custody.​

In June 2019, Lee’s father Noel ‘Seanie’ Boylan (46) was shot several times outside the Lidl store on the Blakestown Road in Dublin 15, just three months after the attempted murder of his son.

He was struck in the arm and chest but managed to survive, and Gardaí believed the hit was linked to a criminal feud in the area.

The court heard Lee was targeted because an organised criminal gang “perceived” he had been involved in the murder of Eric Fowler, shot dead outside his Blakestown home in 2018. ​

The Guards is on tomorrow, Virgin Media On, 9pm