Katie Taylor’s dad Pete Taylor has said he has been left “homeless” and “jobless” since a man was killed at a Bray boxing club.
The boxing trainer was injured in the attack last month, with Gardai having informed him there is a threat to his life.
Reports suggested he was the actual target of the shooting at Bray Boxing Club on June 5th, but Pete has said he was only shot because he “ran at” the shooter.
“People are afraid and I understand that,” he told the Irish Independent.
“You’re like a bad disease to everybody. But they’re afraid because of what they’re reading and the slant being put on it. And what nobody’s saying is I only got shot because I ran at the gunman. The guards will tell you that.
“I was plugging in my phone for the music to start the training session. Everybody was at their stations,” he explained.
“And that’s when I heard bang, bang, bang… I had my back to everything and my first thought was it’s one of my air compressors backfiring. That was the kind of noise it was making.”
“I actually turned around half in irritation to tell one of the lads to turn off the air compressor. And that’s when I saw the gunman at the door, just shooting randomly,” he continued to tell the publication.
“Two girls near me had dived onto the floor. Everybody was running for cover anywhere they could, into the bathrooms, hiding behind machines.
“I was probably in the safest place in the club because I was behind a big, steel cable machine. But I just ran across the gym at him and he shot at me twice. One missed me, but the second one hit and I ended up on my back.”
One of the gym members, Bobby Messett, died from a bullet to the head. While another, Ian Britton, suffered wounds to his legs.
Pete says he is still convinced he was not the target of the shooting, and said he had never been involved in “criminal activity”.
“I’m completely confused by it,” he admitted.
“I’ve never been involved in criminal activity. The guards have said it. They’ve got my phone going back to 2009, they’ve got my laptop, they’ve searched the club, gone through the GPS in my car.
“Like if I thought there was the tiniest danger to anyone in the club, do you think I’d have been turning up at quarter to seven every morning? Heading down there in complete darkness in the winter? Leaving the door open during training? No cameras in the building?”
At the time of the shooting, Pete’s famous boxing champion daughter Katie said she had an estranged relationship with her father now and hadn’t been in touch with him recently.
