HITTING THE ROAD | 

Inmate drives around Dublin in a €30,000 motor while on daily release from open prison

Our team watched as White, who was the first person to be convicted of murder in connection with the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud, later drove off into traffic, travelling in the direction of Dublin city centre.

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Gangland getaway driver Craig White has been driving around Dublin in a €30,000 motor — unknown to the prison bosses who sanction his daily temporary release from Shelton Abbey open centre.

Our pictures show the 37-year-old getting into a Toyota CHR outside a bike shop, where he has been working five days a week, as he nears the end of his life sentence for the 2005 murder of Noel Roche.

Our team watched as White, who was the first person to be convicted of murder in connection with the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud, later drove off into traffic, travelling in the direction of Dublin city centre.

Earlier this week, we approached White when he emerged from the business premises on foot, asking him whether he was allowed to drive while on temporary release from prison.

“I’m taxed and insured on that,” he responded. “I’m allowed to drive a car.”

White didn’t respond, however, when we asked whether prison bosses were aware that he was back behind the wheel of a vehicle while out from jail.

Sources later confirmed to the Sunday World that management in Shelton Abbey prison were unaware that White was getting around the capital in a car while out on day release.

The source said, as far as prison bosses were aware, White was using public transport to get to and from his employment each day.

They also said White would not have been granted permission to drive a vehicle as his conviction for murder relates to him driving a getaway car used in a gangland killing.

When contacted by the Sunday World, the Irish Prison Service said it does not comment on individual prisoners.

White was only 23 years old when in 2009 he was jailed for life by the Central Criminal Court for the murder of Noel Roche on Clontarf Road four years earlier.

Mr Justice George Birmingham imposed the mandatory life sentence for the crime, which he said all sides in the case had agreed was an “assassination” and a “gangland hit”.

Just 19 years old at the time of the killing, White, of O’Devaney Gardens in north inner-city Dublin, had denied murdering 27-year-old Noel Roche on Clontarf Road on November 15, 2005.

Mr Roche was found shot dead in the passenger seat of a Ford Mondeo.

Four shots were fired into the car through a tinted passenger window at about 10.30pm.

He was hit three times and died at the scene from his injuries — just six months after his younger brother, John (25), had also been shot dead in the Kilmainham area of Dublin.

The driver of the vehicle in which Noel Roche died fled the scene and was not part of this trial.

The jury heard that Mr Roche had been at a Phil Collins gig at the Point Depot with his girlfriend and relatives but received a phone call and left the concert early.

Not long after the shooting, a stolen Peugeot 307 was abandoned by two men on Furry Park Road.

Gardaí found a can of petrol in the car and a paper bag containing a balaclava and a Glock semi-automatic pistol which was used to shoot Mr Roche.

A pair of gloves were also found along Furry Park Road.

The jury heard forensic evidence that White’s fingerprints were found on the paper bag and his DNA was on its handles.

Partial DNA profiles matching White’s were also found on the gloves which had been discarded along Furry Park Road.

Anthony Sammon SC, prosecuting, said White was involved in the murder of Mr Roche in a joint enterprise.

He said it was not necessary to establish whether White fired the weapon or drove the car.

The State said White was one of those two people and each were as guilty of murder as the other.

Mr Sammon said White was “all over the place forensically” and he and his partner had “messed up” when they abandoned the car without setting fire to it.

Gardaí said at the time that they believed White was the getaway driver while the shooting itself was believed to have been carried out by known contract killer Paddy Doyle, who worked for ‘Fat’ Freddie Thompson.

Doyle fled the country for the Costa del Sol when he received death threats after the murder and was subsequently executed himself in Spain 18 months later.

Following the murder, gardaí said they believed Noel Roche’s gangland-style execution was in reprisal for the shooting dead two days earlier of Gavin Byrne (30) from Firhouse, and Darren Geoghegan (26) from Drimnagh.

White’s conviction four years later made him the first person to be jailed over the long running Drimnagh-Crumlin feud which resulted in a staggering 16 deaths.

The feud began in 2000 when a drugs seizure led to a split in a gang of young criminals in their late teens and early twenties, most of whom had grown up together and went to the same schools.

One side was led by Freddie Thompson, who is currently serving life in prison for the Kinahan/Hutch feud murder of David ‘Daithi’ Douglas.

The other was led by Brian Rattigan, who was released from prison in August last year after serving a lengthy sentence for killing 21-year-old Declan Gavin in the fatal stabbing that ignited the feud leading to 16 murders.

Sources say, during White’s 15 years in prison, he has largely kept his nose clean and prison bosses harbour high hopes he is ‘one of those cases where rehabilitation is possible.’

“For someone convicted of murder to be placed in Shelton Abbey just 14 years after a conviction for murder shows the level of trust prison bosses are placing in him,” the source said.

“But the issue with the car will obviously have to be investigated and he will be spoken to about it.”