John Hand

Good morning, David.

Yeah, that's it, David.

So there was a three-way crash on the N21 between Abbeyfield and Newcastle West at around 11 o'clock, 11pm in Limerick on Monday night.

So the occupants of the second and third car had non-life-threatening injuries.

But in this scene, Leon, this man was discovered dead.

Now a firearm, a semi-automatic handgun was discovered along with clips of ammunition.

So that immediately led

alerted Gardaí I suppose that there was more to this and over the past few days they've discovered that he held a Swedish passport but they believe he may well be from South America and given the circumstances of what they found and subsequent information sources say that it is firmly believed that this man was on his way to carry out a hit but it had gone completely under the radar as well and had this car not crashed the hit may well have gone ahead.

Yeah, the driver fled in foot.

He's yet to be located, but his whereabouts remain unknown.

But what Gardaí did recover in the car was his phone.

So that's been examined to help build a picture of what exactly is the background here.

I suppose one line of inquiry is that these two men were on their way to target someone in Limerick, but that is yet to be confirmed.

But I suppose it would be unusual that a localised kind of dispute would see a hired hitman brought in from abroad.

I suppose we've seen it.

There's been examples with the likes of the Kinnahan cartel bringing in

the Estonian hitman Imre Arrakis in 2017 and that was filed of course by Gardaí but that was a transnational organised crime gang with a vast amount of cash behind them.

So it's I suppose a surprise the hitman will be drafted in from abroad for perhaps a more localised feud but as I say inquiries are continuing as to who exactly this man was going to target.

As I said there, David, yeah, look, one line of inquiry is that it was heading toward a location in Limerick as part of a localised feud.

But that's still just subject to the inquiry.