{"id":523554,"date":"2026-06-07T19:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/523554\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T19:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T19:40:12","slug":"man-who-died-in-garda-custody-suspected-of-stabbing-man-who-died-after-jumping-into-liffey-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/523554\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who died in Garda custody suspected of stabbing man who died after jumping into Liffey \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A prolific and violent criminal who has died in a Garda<\/a> station was a suspect for stabbing a man in Dublin<\/a> last weekend who jumped into the Liffey to escape<\/a> before later dying. <\/p>\n

Lee McDonnell (34) was arrested for breaches of bail conditions, and as he was being held in a Dublin Garda station on Saturday became unresponsive and later died. His death is being investigated by the Garda and policing watchdog agency, Fiosr\u00fa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Garda\u00ed suspect McDonnell, who was from Ballyfermot, slashed Thomas Griffin (31) at the War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge on Saturday, May 30th. Griffin then jumped into the Liffey and swam across it in a bid to escape his attacker.<\/p>\n

He managed to get to the other side, but after getting out of the water at a spot near Chapelizod Road he lost consciousness. He was treated at the scene by paramedics before being taken to St James\u2019s Hospital, where he later died.<\/p>\n

His death has been under investigation for the past week, and McDonnell had been investigated as a suspect. However, Griffin is not believed to have died from the knife injuries, and his death is not being treated as murder.<\/p>\n

A postmortem examination on McDonnell was due to be carried out.<\/p>\n

McDonnell was well known to garda\u00ed from the time he was a teenager, and had a criminal record that included more than 100 convictions. Often involved in chaotic crime, including violence, he was also a suspect in the gangland murder of Gary Carey in 2022.<\/p>\n

Carey (41), was shot multiple times in the car park of the Hilton Hotel in Kilmainham, Dublin 8, on June 24th of that year. He had been using the gym at the hotel, close to his home, before the incident. He spent six weeks critically ill in hospital before dying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was targeted by two men who chased him through the hotel car park that day. Garda\u00ed believe McDonnell was one of the gunmen. <\/p>\n

A file on the murder \u2013 which had followed two previous efforts on Carey\u2019s life \u2013 was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, which recommended that McDonnell be charged. However, no decision on a charge had been made by the time McDonnell died in a west Dublin Garda station on Saturday.<\/p>\n

In 2015, McDonnell escaped from custody while serving a nine-year sentence for aggravated burglary in which he had broken into a house, beat a man with the butt of a replica gun and took his car.<\/p>\n

Later that day he robbed a petrol station using the stolen car, and also beat the shopkeeper with the replica gun.<\/p>\n

In December of that year, he was being escorted back to prison after a medical appointment when prison officers stopped their van at Macari\u2019s chipper in Inchicore, Dublin, to get him food.<\/p>\n

McDonnell managed to slip out of his handcuffs, opened the prison van door through a window in the vehicle, and fled. He was recaptured five weeks later after a foot chase in Clondalkin. While in prison, he became involved in repeated incidents including violence, and was often transferred between jails for his own safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A prolific and violent criminal who has died in a Garda station was a suspect for stabbing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[956,9,10,52,18,13,14,5650,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-523554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-dublin","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-fiosru","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116710527849637999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}