Gangster Jay O’Connor poses with high-powered rifle at shooting range in Prague

O’Connor, who has more than 65 criminal convictions, visited the gun range during a no-expenses spared holiday to the Czech Republic in 2021.

But while O’Connor was enjoying his trip in the ‘City of a Hundred Spires’, the net was closing in on him in connection with a North Dublin gun attack that left a man fighting for his life.

This week, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder Charlie Cooper in December 2016 at the Special Criminal Court.

Mr Cooper was shot 12 times by a masked gunman in front of his kids through a window at the rear of his home in Parslickstown Green, in North Dublin.

O’Connor also admitted to facilitating a criminal gang in the failed murder attempt. Now 46-years old and facing a lengthy spell behind bars, O’Connor has incredibly spent the last two decades locked in a feud with his former childhood friends.

The long-running dispute has seen multiple murders, non-fatal shootings and stabbings – including the murder of innocent man Keith Walker who was killed in a case of mistaken identity.

O’Connor cut his criminal teeth as a teenage joyrider before becoming involved in robberies across the country.

His gang included two brothers, David and Daniel Goulding, also from Clonsilla, who even then were regarded as dangerous and committed criminals by gardaí.

All three young men would go on to become members of the Westies gang who controlled the drugs trade in large parts of Blanchardstown, Corduff and Ballymun.

Led by Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg, the Westies became the most feared criminal outfit operating in Dublin’ in the late Nineties and early Noughties.

The Westies became notorious due to the extreme violence they used to recover drugs debts. However, a gun attack on one dealer by the Westies led to a fall-out with Baldoyle-based drugs trafficker David Lindsay.

In 2003, Sugg and Coates fled to Spain because of the heat they were getting from gardaí, rival criminals like Lindsay and splits within their own organisation.

Lindsay’s gang moved in on their turf and clashed with two criminal brothers – Andrew ‘Madser’ and Mark Glennon – who also had designs on taking over their patch.

Jason O’Connor sided with the Glennons, while David and Daniel Goulding took Lindsay’s side – splitting the childhood pals.

In December 2004, Daniel and David Goulding miraculously escaped with their lives when O’Connor’s associates sprayed bullets at them from a machine-gun.

Within six months, both Mark (32) and Andrew (30) would be murdered as part of the bitter dispute.​

As tensions mounted on streets of West Dublin, Lindsay was then involved in a brutal attack on O’Connor in which he sliced him up with a knife after storming his west Dublin home. Lindsay was later tortured and murdered in 2008.

O’Connor was jailed for three in 2005 after he robbed nearly €30,000 from a supermarket in Castledermot, Co. Carlow.​

While he was in prison, David Goulding and his pal Michael ‘Micka’ Kelly took their chance and started to become serious players in the city’s underworld.

In February 2009, Goulding was jailed for three years for interfering with the principal prosecution witness in an attempted murder trial. His brother, Daniel, was also jailed for 10 years for the possession of a kilo of cocaine in 2009.​

Following his release from jail, David Goulding was injured after being shot in a car in Hartstown, north Dublin in 2012, with associates of O’Connor were believed to have been behind the attack.

​ This week, O’Connor pleaded guilty in the Special Criminal Court. Mr Justice Hunt adjourned the matter to July 30.