€18k for garda 14 years after gun put to his head
A garda, who told the High Court he feared he was going to die when a gun was aimed at his head, has been awarded €18,000 damages at a Garda Compensation hearing 14 years after the incident.
Mr Justice Michael Twomey heard that Garda Colm Gregan was 27 when a gunman at the public hatch in Shankill Garda Station, Co Dublin, threatened that he wanted to shoot a garda.
Divisional Crime Task Force officer Garda Gregan, now 41, told the court that while walking through the station on 14 August, 2004, he saw three colleagues “cowering” in a hallway. He had been told of the threat and could see the gunman through a door window.
He had entered the public office and requested armed assistance over the radio and when the suspect saw him he had pointed the weapon at him. Garda Gregan had held his hands in the air in plain sight of the armed man.
The High Court hearing was told Garda Gregan said to the gunman that he was not armed and was not a threat to him. He had the gun pointed at his head. Garda Gregan said he believed he was going to die. Shortly afterwards, the suspect started screaming and frothing at the mouth.
Garda Gregan, of Blackrock Garda Station and now resident in Wicklow, said the whole incident lasted about an hour, and for half of this time he was alone with the suspect. The man had later surrendered the gun.
“I remember thinking about my family and how I was never going to see them again… that I would never grow old and have a full life… I was frozen on the spot,” Garda Gregan said in an affidavit.
He outlined to the court how he had afterwards experienced persistent symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
In April 2006, national media reported that the man involved had hoped to provoke gardaí to shoot him by entering the station waving a gun and that he had been sentenced to three years imprisonment by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
