Northern Ireland

Pizza delivery driver Kieran McManus 'knew he was getting shot' after hearing sinister greeting

Pizza delivery driver Kieran McManus `knew he was getting shot' after hearing a voice behind him say `All right, Kieran?'
Pizza delivery driver Kieran McManus `knew he was getting shot' after hearing a voice behind him say `All right, Kieran?'

PIZZA delivery driver Kieran McManus "knew he was getting shot" after hearing a voice behind him say "All right, Kieran?" moments before the gunman pulled the trigger.

His half brother Christopher Donnelly told the inquest into his death of the look of "horror" on the father-of-one's face in the seconds before he was struck twice in the back from a shotgun outside a west Belfast takeaway on a busy Saturday night.

His mother Sally McManus put her head in her hands inside the small courtroom in the Laganside complex yesterday as witnesses described seeing the blood pouring from wounds in Mr McManus's chest and abdomen as he lay dying outside Domino's on Kennedy Way.

A getaway car was abandoned and burnt out in Denewood Park, off Andersonstown Road a short time after the shooting.

More than six years after the 26-year-old's murder at around 11.20pm on March 31 2013, no one has been brought to justice.

Detectives investigating the murder of Kieran McManus in west Belfast released this image of him moments before he was gunned down
Detectives investigating the murder of Kieran McManus in west Belfast released this image of him moments before he was gunned down

Coroner Paddy McGurgan was told of a confrontation on Father's Day the previous year, when Mr McManus was set upon in the car park of Trinity Lodge restaurant in west Belfast while out with his cousin Martin McCabe and two other friends.

Mr McCabe said someone had recognised "a fella that was in the bar" as being being connected to the victim of a sword attack that "Kieran was involved" in.

"We decided, to save bother, we would all leave the Trinity and get taxis home."

Before they could leave the compound "six to nine men... from Turf Lodge" tried to attack Mr McManus, with his cousin standing in front of him "trying to protect him" until Mr McCabe was stabbed with a broken bottle "on my left side. Kieran got stabbed in the head," the court heard.

Christopher Donnelly and his friend Aidan Muir - then both aged 16 - spent the evening in Mr McManus's car while he delivered pizzas around west Belfast and were later joined by the elder brother's friend Paul Crothers.

All three described a "normal" night, with no signs of what was to come.

The inquest heard that Mr McManus, who had been living in Orchard Hill, Crumlin, had been called in by his manager at the last minute and none of the other staff would have known he was going to be working that night.

Mr Donnelly revealed that "a week or two before the shooting", his brother was told, by a person not named in court, he "was going to get two other individuals to come and see him and they would see him when they would see him".

He said Mr McManus had just put the latest pizza order in the car when the voice behind him said "All right, Kieran".

"Kieran heard it, by the look of shock on his face Kieran knew what was coming next," Mr Donnelly said.

"Kieran didn't even get to turn his body round before he was shot in the back."

The inquest continues.