A Dublin man has been found guilty of murdering a father of one by shooting him three times as the victim pushed his four-month-old son into a pram in broad daylight.
It took the jury of seven men and four women just over three hours to discover that Wayne Cooney was the cyclist who circled Jordan Davis for three days like a “shark heading for its prey” before firing eight shots at him with a 9mm pistol.
Mr. Davis suffered three gunshot wounds, including one to the head, which killed him instantly. A child who happened to be cycling through the track was only a few feet away when Cooney opened fire.
The State told the jury that Mr. Davis was a drug dealer, but that this did not diminish his right to respect for his right to life.
Following the jury verdict, Mr. Tony Hunt has remanded Cooney (31) into custody ahead of a hearing this Friday morning in which members of the victim’s family will be invited to speak before Cooney is sentenced to life.
Mr Justice Hunt thanked the jurors for their hard work in a “disturbing” trial and described Cooney’s recklessness in firing eight times while Mr Davis pushed his son in a stroller as “astonishing”. Davis’ mother, Sandra Davis, who testified at the trial, was supported by friends and family as the verdict was read.
The prosecution alleged that Mr Davis owed €70,000 to a local drug dealer, identified only as CD at trial, and who was the brother of Cooney’s then-girlfriend. When Mr. Davis was examined by Gardaí, they found a message from CD in which Mr. Davis was warned, “I’m with your casemate, it won’t be long,” and later they told him, “Soon, very soon, bang bang.”
Prosecutor Bernard Condon SC told the jury that the circumstantial evidence against Cooney was such that he was either the gunman or the “unhappiest person ever”. A garda had identified Cooney on CCTV footage as the cyclist circling Mr Davis.
Cooney’s DNA was found on a glove in an area on Belcamp Lane where the shooter was able to dispose of gloves and a black body warmer minutes after the shooting. Cooney was also identified when he returned to the same area about an hour and 20 minutes after the shooting to retrieve the body warmer.
The prosecution also relied on cell phone evidence showing that Cooney’s phone CD was ringing at times when the person identified on CCTV as the shooter was seen holding a phone to his ear.
This was the first lawsuit to challenge the use of mobile phone evidence following a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which found that Ireland’s system for storing and accessing mobile phone data violated privacy rights.
Mr Justice Hunt allowed evidence of the cell phone, saying that the “heavy public interest and public interest associated with the need to thoroughly investigate this murder outweigh the limited privacy rights associated with the data.”
Following the jury verdict, Mr Justice Hunt told the jury that there had been pre-trial hearings in which the defense attempted to rule out relevant evidence related to CCTV, cell phones and certain witnesses, including Stacey Hayes.
After the murder, the shooter’s movements were monitored by CCTV as he walked to a nearby bus stop. Ms Hayes said at the trial that she was driving through Darndale at the same time with Cooney’s girlfriend, identified only as EF. EF spoke to someone on the phone and forwarded Ms. Hayes until they got to the same bus stop where EF said “there’s the idiot” and told Ms Hayes to stop.
Ms. Hayes said she recognized the person who got into her car as EF’s friend Wayne. She denied to Cooney’s attorney Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC that criminals had pressured her to make a false accusation against Cooney. Cell phone evidence showed that Cooney’s phone had been talking to EF’s phone for 200 seconds, just as Ms Hayes said EF was referring her to the bus stop while talking to someone on the phone.
Cooney denied Gardaí that he was the person on the bike or that he was the shooter. Mr O Lideadha told the jury that the prosecution’s case contained “big holes” and was not evidence beyond reasonable doubt. He said a number of people may have had motives to kill Mr. Davis and questioned the credibility of the garda who identified Cooney on CCTV footage. He further questioned the prosecution’s claim that they had proved the cell phone belonged to Cooney.
The jury’s ruling is likely to be appealed. During a legal speech, Mr O Lideadha described the judge’s accusation to the jury as “the complete denial of a fair trial”. He indicated that if the case goes to the appeals court, he will comment on the judge’s presentation to the jury.
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Sandra Davis, Jordan Davis’ mother, at the Central Criminal Court, Dublin (PIC: Collins Courts)
drugs
Mr Davis’ mother, Sandra Davis, told the trial that she knew her son was dealing drugs when he started buying expensive clothes and went to Amsterdam. When his son was born, he spent over €1,000 on a buggy. She said things “went downhill” after January 2019 when Jordan’s “so-called friends” all disappeared.
In March of that year, five men appeared in her garden. One of them yelled at Mrs. Davis, “Tell Jordan to pay his goddamn bills, it’s not over yet, tell Jordan we’ll be back.” That night the windows of the house were smashed, she said.
In May 2019, she said Jordan “seemed to believe that everything was fine” and he began to relax. “He solved it, he said he solved it,” she said. She agreed that Jordan had been friends with Sean Little, who was shot dead the day before her son.
During a separate investigation into CD, Gardaí discovered a drug dealer’s “tick list,” which contained names of people who owed money to CD. Gardaí identified a person who owed €70,000 and marked “Jordo” as being Jordan Davis.
In a lengthy indictment against the jury, Mr Justice Hunt said that if they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Cooney was the cyclist who came after Jordan Davis and shot him, they should find him guilty of murder.
He told them that the gunman who ran after Davis and shot him to death was “undoubtedly guilty of murder,” but that the issue for them was whether the cyclist was Wayne Cooney.
Mr Justice Hunt told the jury that if the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cooney killed Mr Davis, they could discover that he had prevented the killer’s arrest or prosecution by taking away the body warmer. He said Cooney, as he admits, was seen on Belcamp Lane about an hour and twenty minutes after the CCTV murder.
He said the shooter threw away the vest over a 40 second period when he was off camera and when Cooney retrieved the vest he also went off camera for almost exactly 40 seconds.
He said the jury should consider that if Cooney was not the person who left the body warmer, he must have gained some knowledge that it was placed there. He added: “If he didn’t do the shooting, he gained the knowledge of where the item was in that hour and 20 minutes. You have to take that into account.”
In this view, Mr Justice Hunt said, Mr Cooney was not the shooter, but may have “covered up”. He further told the jury: “If he didn’t shoot, he didn’t end up on the avenue by accident. There had to be information that got him there, he had to know something about what he was picking up and where he was getting it from.” .”
Cooney, whose address is Glenshane Drive in Tallaght, had pleaded innocence on May 22, 2019, to the murder of Jordan Davis, 22, in a lane next to Our Lady of Immaculate National School in Dublin’s Darndale. He also pleaded not guilty to possessing a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and possessing ammunition in circumstances from which it may reasonably be concluded that he did not possess them for lawful purposes. The jury also convicted him on those counts.