The shocking incident took place after officers searched Cooper’s cell and found a suspected quantity of illegal tablets.
Career criminal Jeremy Cooper, who was hospitalised after the skirmish with prison officers this week.(Image: Paul Healy)
A lifelong criminal convicted of falsely imprisoning a man who became the victim of an infamous gangland murder has been hospitalised after hitting his head amid a prison drugs search.
This paper has learned that serial offender Jeremy Cooper (58), who was previously involved in the kidnapping of a drug dealer who was tortured and killed in the 1990s, was rushed to A&E after he whacked his head after he fought with prison officers during a contraband search in Dublin’s Wheatfield Prison this week.
The shocking incident took place after officers searched Cooper’s cell and found a suspected quantity of illegal tablets. Sources have confirmed that gardai have since been notified of the drugs seizure – while Cooper remains in hospital. Cooper, who has been in and out of prison, was jailed in 2023 after he was caught dealing sleeping tablets.
Sources say officers in Wheatfield Prison had become concerned that drugs were being flown by windows of cells – prompting a search this week.
It was there that they discovered a suspected quantity of tablets and then brought Cooper to the prison’s reception area where they attempted to carry out a routine strip search for further suspected contraband. Sources say Cooper became unruly and that amid a struggle with prison officers fell and hurt himself in the process. He was immediately taken to hospital for treatment, where it is understood he remained on Wednesday.
The Irish Prison Service has declined to comment, citing it cannot comment on individual prisoner cases. However it is understood that as is routine when contraband is discovered, gardai have been notified and are expected to take the tablets for inspection.
Jeremy Cooper is well known to gardai and has 79 previous convictions to his name – including drug dealing, armed robbery and false imprisonment. Most recently he was jailed in 2023 after he was found with more than €400 of tablets when he ran from gardaí and was caught after a chase.
He is perhaps most well known for his involvement in a major gangland incident when he helped abduct Mark Dwyer in Ballybough and bring him to the place where he was ultimately tortured and murdered on December 14, 1996.
He was one of three masked men who burst into Dwyer’s flat and tied him up before taking him to the house where infamous gangland murderer ‘Cotton Eye’ Joe Delaney murdered him. Cooper was initially charged with murder but the charge was dropped when he pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.
‘Cotton Eye’ Joe Delaney pictured in 2001
He was at the time jailed to 12 years behind bars. He subsequently was jailed for 14 years for a horrific home invasion that took place in Tipperary in May 1997.
The then 30 year old Cooper pleaded guilty at Clonmel Circuit Court to falsely imprisoning Frank and Mary Britton at their home in Cloneen, near Clonmel. The court heard he was part of a gang that stole £40,000 worth of cigarettes and £9,000 cash from Mr Britton before locking him, his wife Mary and their three children in a storeroom measuring eight feet by five.
The Britton family remained there, bound, gagged and without ventilation for sixteen hours before the alarm was raised. Members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation told the court that Cooper was joint leader of a ruthless Dublin gang that preyed on provincial towns
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