This article is from page 6 of the 2008-01-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 6 JPG
this week that she is still optimistic that the mys- tery into her brother’s death will be solved. She has appealed to anyone with information on the killing to come forward. “It seems to have been left there, shelved. There doesn’t seem to be
anything new. It is maddening, gall- ing. You keep thinking you might get a phone call but there is nothing,” said Ms Horgan.
“However we can’t give up hope and we hope that something will happen yet,” she added.
Ms Horgan lives in Ballyheigue, County Kerry and has not had direct contact with gardai probing the death. However her brother, Ray, who re- sides just 100 yards from where Sean lived in Ardnacrusha has liaised with the investigation team. But there has been no breakthrough as of yet.
“I am appealing to anyone with information, anyone who knows something and if they were afraid to say anything all along, to go to the guards now, five years on,’ she said.
“I know there might be fear in- volved as well. It could be that, but if they went to the guards they would never be known. Is it that they don’t understand what the family is going through?” she asked.
She said she firmly believed some- one was staying quiet and was refus-
ing to disclose information which might lead to the murder being solved.
‘There is not a hope that someone doesn’t know something. It is fright to see an innocent man left there. We don’t even have a proper idea why he was killed. Along with not knowing who, we don’t know why,” she said.
“They (the killers) are out there free. They could do it to anybody else. Have they any conscience at all’? How do you live with that?” she asked.
‘All we know is he was kind and soft-hearted. A lot of people wouldn’t have cars without him. He more or less told them to pay whenever they had money,’ said Ms Horgan.
“It doesn’t get any easier for us. It is like a burden you are carrying around. Maybe if there was some bit of closure it might help, but it is not going to bring him back,” she said.
One month before Sean was gunned down, Limerick nightclub bouncer Brian Fitzgerald was murdered at his home in Corbally, Limerick. Four
men were tried in relation to this case at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin this year. That trial concluded in November. Three of the men were acquitted, while the other, a 24-year- old, was found guilty of murder.
Ms Horgan said the breakthrough in that case left her with some hope that her brother’s killers would be caught.
“Brian Fitzgerald was killed just a month before Sean. We kept hoping that something might come out of Sean’s case, even though they were completely different cases,’ she said.
Mr Poland was born in Portum- na, County Galway and his family moved to Ardnacrusha several years ago. Sean had lived at the family home when he was murdered. His father and brother have since moved back to Clontuskert in east Galway.