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14th Jan 2020

“Whether I was dead or alive they didn’t care” – Taxi driver shot in Drogheda describes what happened

Alan Loughnane

Drogheda shooting

John Myles has spoken out about his ordeal.

A taxi driver who was injured in a shooting in Drogheda on Monday night has spoken about how he was shot in error.

John Myles was shot while driving his taxi across the bridge of peace in Drogheda on Monday evening.

He is being treated as a victim and a witness to the attack and is not connected with the crime.

It is understood the intended target was a front seat passenger in the taxi. Detectives believe the shooting was linked to a Drogheda feud which began in July 2018. Myles has called on feuding gangs to end their warfare before anyone else gets hurt.

Myles was discharged from hospital at 4am on Tuesday and spoke on The Michael Reade Show on LMFM to explain his harrowing ordeal.

He said a vehicle cut off his taxi before two men jumped out and one of them pointed a gun at him. If he had not turned his back towards the shooter, he might have been paralysed.

“The bullet went in and out. Luckily enough it didn’t lodge in the back, if it’d gone further I would have been paralysed for the rest of my life,” he said.

Myles was keen to speak out to reinforce that he had done nothing wrong and was not involved in this feud.

“I done nothing wrong on anybody,” he said. “I picked up a lad and I ended up getting shot while he got out like the coward he is and ran.

“It’s me that’s shot, it’s me that’s suffering and has to explain to my kids what happened and how it happened. My daughter won’t go to school now, she’s at home. Because she’s panicking, so what do you do after that? Where do you go after that?”

When the shooting happened, Myles said he was in shock but all he could think about was his children.

“I didn’t know what to think. All that went through my head was the kids, just my kids is all I was thinking about, what would happen them,” he said.

“I didn’t think about anything else. I didn’t think about my car, I didn’t care.”

John Myles’s full interview on The Michael Reade Show on LMFM can be listened to here.

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