An eyewitnesses to a horrific shooting incident in Donegal in 2020 has described the terror of seeing Stephen Dowling on the rampage.
Dowling went on a shooting rampage with a high-powered rifle in Glenties in Donegal, and has been jailed for a total of eight years.
Gardai feared for their lives as bullets missed them by inches after the drug and drink-fuelled deer hunter went berserk.
The 25-year-old fired up to nine shots during the hour-long incident in Glenties, Co Donegal, in the early hours of February 22, 2020.
Brian Carr was an eyewitness to the events, and explained to Claire Byrne on RTE Radio that he had come across Dowling moments before the shooting began.
He said: "I was in a local bar playing darts so I was sitting up at the counter and this young lad walks in, he starts getting a bit loud and interrupting things.
"He got louder and louder and we asked the bartender to ask him to settle down, that was about 11.05pm. How he was, we thought there might've been a row. Eventually, him and two other people he was with all got up and left after that.
"An hour or so later I was getting into a taxi and heard a loud bang, I thought it was a firework. Just before I got home, the phone rang. It was my Mum, who lives on the main street and she was telling me someone was shooting on the main street and she called the Gardai. The Gardai told her to get into a back room and away from the front window.
"Glenties town is just one long street, one road goes to the housing estate, the other to the GAA pitch. Dowling came out of the B&B and had been in the takeaway earlier. He approached a car with a takeaway driver, TJ, in it and asked 'are you a taxi'. TJ said no and then he saw the gun so he took off.
"He was about 200m up the street and Dowling fired a shot, went through the back window and out through the windshield. Then he went and fired shots into a house which was thankfully empty at the time. He went to the next house, fired shots in the front window, thankfully that was empty as well."
At this stage, another eyewitness had rung around to the pub and the Garda station telling them to lock the doors and explaining the situation.
Brian continued: "The neighbours were coming out to have a look at what was going on and there were shots flying by them. He messed around that area for a while, into fields, over fences and then back onto the GAA pitch road. On the night in question, four Gardai were on duty. By pure luck, there were two squad cars in town. When one left, they went down the street and drove past Dowling. The second one spotted him, did a u-turn and went after him.
"Eventually, they managed to pounce on him, but it was absolutely terrifying."
