GARDAÍ have charged a man in connection with the murder of Limerick man Noel Campion (34), who was shot dead in the city 17 years ago.
The suspect, aged in his 40s, was arrested yesterday (Friday), and charged in connection with the broad daylight gun attack, which occurred in Thomondgate on April 26, 2007.
The male suspect is due to appear before a special sitting of Limerick District Court later this Saturday.
Noel Campion was a pillion passenger on a motorbike who was shot dead by a gunman who emerged from a phone box and fired at the father of three as the motorbike approached the junction of High Road and Inglewood Terrace, at around 10.40am on the morning.
Campion, of Pineview Gardens, Moyross, was described by Garda sources at the time as being one of a number of key players in the city’s drugs trade linked to the Dundon McCarthy criminal network.
A fortnight prior to his murder, Campion appeared in court where he paid €4,500 for the return of six horses that he had been keeping illegally in March 2007.
In 1999, Noel Campion was jailed for 14 years with the final six years suspended for committing armed robbery and was released in 2005.
Two of Campion’s brothers, Gary and William, are each serving life sentences for committing separate murders.
Gary Campion was the first person in Ireland to be convicted of two gangland murders in the State, including the fatal shooting of innocent nightclub doorman Brian Fitzgerald, Mill Road, Corbally, in 2002, and the fatal shooting of Campion’s former associate “Fat” Frankie Ryan in 2006.
In 2000, William Campion was convicted of the murder of bachelor farmer, Patrick “Paud” Skehan (68), at his home at Ardataggle, Bridgetown, south east county Clare, in 1998.
William Campion had denied the murder as well as burglary at the farmhouse but was found guilty by a jury following his trial at the Central Criminal Court.
Mr Skehan was attacked in his home between April 9 and 10, 1998.
When he was eventually found by a neighbour on the morning of April 10, he was barely conscious, hanging upside down in his kitchen, with a blood-stained blindfold across his eyes, and his hands and legs were bound with television cable and a necktie to a stair bannister.
Mr Skehan, who had also been doused in flammable liquid, died of brain damage in hospital two months after the attack.
