Dealer planned to shoot suspect, says man

A murder trial jury was told in the Central Criminal Court yesterday how a
drug dealer planned to shoot a man suspected of stealing £20,000 of ecstasy
tablets from his gang before personally burying him at a secret location.

Mr Christopher Dwyer, whose brother, Mr Mark Dwyer, was subsequently
murdered, said the dealer told associates he would spend a couple of hours
using a baseball bat on the suspect, who he only knew by the nickname,
"Killer", before murdering him.

He was giving evidence on the fourth day of the trial of Mr Scott Delaney
(23), of Palmerstown Park, Palmerstown, Dublin.

Mr Delaney has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Mark Dwyer (22), of
Foster Terrace, Ballybough, Dublin, on December 14th, 1996, and has also
denied falsely imprisoning him on that date at Foster Terrace.

The accused man claims that while he knew Mr Dwyer was to be abducted and
taken for questioning he was not aware he would be shot.

Mr Dwyer said he was summoned to the drug dealer's home with his brother
and a number of other men after the ecstasy tablets went missing from
outside a pub in Coolock.

It was agreed the man responsible must be someone with prior knowledge the
drugs would be there. Apart from "Killer", the only others who knew about
the consignment were in the room.

Mr Christopher Carey, who was also at the meeting, said the dealer was very
annoyed, very frustrated and very afraid. "He said the dealer was fully
prepared to kill to get the parcel back." It was a "crunch" time for him
because he had lost other consignments of drugs before. He wanted to be
prepared for any attack on him so he was going to get "tooled up" and asked
Mark Dwyer to get a gun.

Mr Carey agreed that after being detained he told gardai a lot about what
was involved in subsequent arrests in relation to Veronica Guerin.

He had not been charged with any offence in relation to working for the
drug dealer involved in the case before the court.

The trial continues today before Mr Justice Morris and the jury.