Dramatic photos show armed gardai raiding notorious Dundon-McCarthy stronghold in Limerick

Our exclusive pictures show numerous members of the Garda’s elite ERU in bullet proof vests and carrying weapons outside the Lenihan Avenue/Hyde Road stronghold of the Dundons during a daylight operation.

There was a massive Garda presence as armed officers sealed off the streets in the Limerick suburb, located in the heartland of the mob that terrorised the city for years.

Gardaí said officers attached to the Roxboro Road Crime Office conducted a number of searches at “several properties” on Hyde Road and Lenihan Avenue, Prospect, on Wednesday morning.

“During the course of the searches a cocaine press was seized and a large quantity of white powder which will now be subject to analysis by Forensic Science Ireland (FSI),” gardai said.

“Investigations are ongoing.”

The location is the base for the notorious Dundon gang who were key players in the two decade-long gangland feud in Limerick that claimed at least 17 lives, including those of several innocent people.

While some of the top leaders of the gang are in prison or facing serious criminal charges, they still operate from their Limerick base that was the subject of the Garda operation yesterday morning.

One of them, notorious gangster Ger Dundon, is facing jail in the UK after he was convicted last month over a blackmail plot where he “threatened to shoot two dudes in the head” if a £300,000 (€343k) ransom was not paid.

The Sunday World had earlier revealed that the Limerick criminal has changed his name by deed poll to Darren McClean and it was this name that he was referred to throughout the lengthy trial.

The 37-year-old senior member of Limerick’s infamous McCarthy-Dundon gang was remanded in further custody after he was convicted by a jury of two charges of conspiracy to blackmail and one of conspiracy to falsely imprison. He was cleared on two charges of kidnap.

He was the only one convicted in the trial with four others, including Drogheda criminal Mark Kavanagh, cleared of all charges.

Dundon’s close associate and gang boss Cornelius Price was too ill to stand trial, despite being charged and suspected of being the main player in the plot.

The trial had heard that two brothers were blindfolded and warned they would have their brains splattered “all over the road”, while held at a caravan site at Smithy Fen, Cambridgeshire.

Dundon faces the prospect of a lengthy jail sentence in March when he next appears at Wood Green Crown Court in London.

Ger Dundon’s brothers, Dessie, Wayne and John, are all serving life sentences for different Limerick murders, while he was jailed for four years in October, 2018, after he helped hide an automatic, pump-action, sawn-off shotgun in an outside toilet of a house, and then fled from armed gardaí in a dangerous high-speed chase on February 26, 2017.

After his release from jail, Ger Dundon continued to be involved in serious organised criminality and he is a suspect in the murder of notorious gangster Robbie Lawlor in the North.

In December, at Belfast High Court, during a bail application for a man charged in connection with Lawlor’s murder, Dundon was named as being part of a three-man hit team involved in the murder.

Dundon faces the prospect of a lengthy jail sentence in March when he next appears at Wood Green Crown Court in London.

The McCarthy-Dundon gang, who were involved in drug dealing, extortion and armed robbery, have been central players in the two-decade long Limerick feud, which also involved several other criminal families, including the Ryans and the Keane-Collopy gang from St Mary's Park.

The gang have also been responsible for the murders of several innocent people unconnected to gangland, including night club bouncer Brian Fitzgerald, who was shot dead in 2002, and Shane Geoghegan, who was the victim of a case of mistaken identity in 2008.

In July 2014, Dublin's Special Criminal Court found Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen guilty of the murder of Limerick businessman Roy Collins.

Mr Collins died after being shot in the chest at the Coin Castle Amusements Arcade in Limerick on 9 April, 2009.

Dundon, of Lenihan Avenue and Killeen, from Hyde Road, both in Limerick, had pleaded not guilty to his murder but both men were handed down given life sentences.

]Gardaí also suspect the gang helped organise the murder of mother-of-two Baiba Saulite who was shot dead outside her home in Swords, Dublin by a lone gunman in 2006.

It is believed the murder was ordered by her ex-husband, Lebanese gangster Hassan Hassan, who had approached gang members to help organise the murder while he was in prison.

Two gang members, Glen Geasley and Sean Callinan were convicted in 2008 of conspiring to possess weapons after a joint operation between Gardaí and undercover agents from the Serious Organised Crime Agency in the UK.

They were jailed after a plot to import weapons to be used against the gang's rivals that included rocket launchers, AKM assault rifles and uzi submachine guns.