garda sting operation<\/a> had been totally inappropriate in this case.<\/p>\nFiosr\u00fa has already examined two peripheral aspects to the case, neither of which was controversial.<\/p>\n
Now, however, the Irish Examiner understands a more complete investigation is taking place on foot of a complaint.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Fiosr\u00fa said that the ombudsman does not confirm or deny the existence of complaints.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, last month an inquest into Mr Fitzgerald\u2019s death in Carlow was told that Mr Fitzgerald had felt guilty about how he believed he was responsible for getting his two friends into trouble over buying the guns.<\/p>\n
Depositions from his parents related their son\u2019s state of mind in the time between his arrest and that of his friends in March 2024, and his death in June 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe felt so guilty for his two friends, I mean, they were all in it together, but I think it was mostly Evan,\u201d his mother told the inquest.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really wanted to protect his friends, so I don\u2019t know how much involvement each person had. After the court case, he was so upset.\u201d She said the case had been consuming her son and she questioned why the sting operation took place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guards were looking for organised crime people, not foolish Evan with his morbid fascination,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One of the conditions of the bail granted to the three men in March 2024 was that there was to be no contact between them ahead of any trial.<\/p>\n
Evan Fitzgerald\u2019s father, Brian, told the inquest that his son felt very isolated as a result of the bail conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvan and I were very close,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried my best to get Evan to focus on matters outside of his upcoming court case. It did play heavily on his mind.\u201d On April 16 this year, Shane Kinsella of Tynock, Kiltegan, and Daniel Quinn Burke from Allendale Lawn in Baltinglass pleaded guilty at Naas District Court to possession of a rifle, a pistol and ammunition on March 2, 2024 near Straffan, Co Kildare.<\/p>\n
Both were subsequently handed three-year suspended prison sentences.<\/p>\n
When contacted, Brian Fitzgerald said he didn\u2019t wish to make any comment about his son\u2019s case at this point. <\/p>\n
\n This article was edited on Sept 7, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The garda ombudsman Fiosr\u00fa is investigating all the circumstances leading to the death of Evan Fitzgerald, the Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-617377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}