Garda Tony Golden to be honoured at State funeral

Louth yesterday evening after responding to a call about domestic abuse at a house near Omeath has been named as Anthony Golden, a native of Culleens, KIllala Road, Ballina.

Fr Joe Kennedy had just come from visiting the Golden family in their home in Blackrock, Co Louth and he said Nicola Golden was completely devastated as she tried to understand why her husband had been cut down by a crazed killer who was on bail on terrorist charges.

Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene while the woman was taken to hospital where she remains in a serious condition.

He is then believed to have taken his own life.

He was due before the Special Criminal Court in Dublin after being arrested and charged at the start of the year following a joint Garda-Police Service of Northern Ireland operation to target dissident republicans in the border area.

He said that it was not long ago that Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe was murdered in the same Garda district and that the authorities were still looking for those responsible for the “cruel and heartless” crime.

The rays from the powerful autumn sunshine which managed to find their way through the window blinds of the tiny Garda station in Omeath cast an eerie spotlight on the smiling face of murdered police officer Tony Golden in the photograph that his grieving and shell-shocked colleagues had mounted on a wall.

Mackin’s address at the time was Craigaveen Close in Newry, although it is thought he may have also lived in Hilltown and Rostrevor over the years.

The officer was responding to an incident “of a domestic nature”.

“This most genuine and disastrous occurrence has not just prompted the passing of an individual from A Garda Siochana, while on obligation, yet appallingly has likewise included the demise of one and the genuine harm of someone else”, he said.

Ireland’s President Michael Higgins said he expressed his sympathies to Garda commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan.

Garda Representative Association (GRA) president Dermot O’Brien said: “This terrible, awful news is the deepest fear of every police family”.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald, said she was appalled by the loss of life.

Niall Collins, justice spokesman for the main opposition party in Ireland, Fianna Fail, said he was shocked to hear a garda had been killed. “When such events occur, they put much of our daily news and concerns in perspective”. “An officer paying the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty”.