Gangland thug Shane Lyons poses with his girlfriend -- months before he subjected her to an attack so savage she was left fearing for her life.
Lyons (41) locked his then girlfriend Fiona Kelly into his bedroom and brutally assaulted her and a close pal, Kerry Lee Ball, in a shocking incident at his southside home on August 31, 2009.
The Herald can reveal that Lyons is a notorious gangster who has links with 'Fat' Freddie Thompson's gang.
He was also involved in a major dispute with gangland boss Eamon 'The Don' Dunne over a stolen car, before 'The Don' was shot dead in a Cabra pub last year.
Lyons is also a convicted drugs trafficker who was jailed for four years in March 2001 after he admitting importing IR£160,000 worth of cannabis from South Africa.
choked
The violent crook has also links to veteran gangster Martin 'The Viper' Foley.
Yesterday, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Lyons (41) choked Ms Kelly before locking the door and telling her to "sleep on the floor like the animal she was".
A friend who tried to protect her was then beaten so badly by Lyons that she had to be taken away in an ambulance.
Lyons, Ms Kelly and her pal Kerry Lee Ball, who had given birth to a baby six weeks earlier, had all been on a night out together before he attacked them at his Rathfarnham, Dublin, home.
Ms Kelly described Lyons during the attack as "the face of pure evil".
Lyons had separated from his wife after she had a miscarriage and had been seeing Ms Kelly for six months at the time of the attack on August 31, 2009.
They had been out at a city-centre club and the two women had taken cocaine during the evening. Ms Kelly had told Lyons she wanted to go outside for a cigarette but instead went back to his home at Harold's Grange Road, Rathfarnham.
Garda Joanne Grogan told the court the accused had come home screaming that Ms Kelly had left him. He told her to get out of his bed and she went downstairs to a spare bedroom, where she packed to leave. Lyons told her "she wasn't driving her car" even though she told him she did not have the keys.
He pushed her against the bedroom wall, then followed her upstairs where he pushed her down on to his bed, got on top of her and 'strangled' her with both his hands.
Her body went limp, she could not breathe and her eyes felt like they were going to pop, as he told her she "was trying to make a fool out of him and wouldn't treat him like a thickie".
Her head going light, she stopped fighting and he let go.
He locked the bedroom door, threw a pillow at her and told her to sleep on the floor before taking the battery from her phone and putting it under his pillow when she tried to call her father.
He punched her to the side of the head at one point but eventually agreed to open the door, saying: "Fiona, I just didn't want you to drive home."
Ms Ball arrived and Ms Kelly told her what happened before trying to strike Lyons with a bottle opener. The accused grabbed Ms Kelly by the throat again, lifting her up on her "tippy toes", saying: "Who do you think you are, I'll f***ing kill you".
Ms Ball tried to pull him off Ms Kelly but he shoved her away twice and flung Ms Kelly on to the bed by her hair.
Again Ms Ball tried to stop him and he punched her full force to the side of the head.
Ms Kelly screamed at her friend to run, but Ms Ball tripped and fell and the accused got her by the arms and flung her out into his front garden, on to her back.
He then grabbed Ms Kelly by the throat again and pinned her to a car. Gardai and an ambulance arrived and Ms Ball was taken away on a spinal board.
In her victim impact statement, which she read out to the court, Ms Ball said she would never forget Lyons face on the night, his extreme rage, or her friend's face turning purple in colour.
Lyons hands were gripped "around her neck so tightly I thought she was almost dead", Ms Ball said.
She began blocking out what happened with prescription medication, she was in constant fear and her mother had to care for her newborn baby. Her relationship ended and she became withdrawn and paranoid, she said.
haunt
In her statement, Ms Kelly said she suffered flashbacks, nightmare and a lack of sleep as well as "vivid images" over and over in her head of the accused strangling her.
"It was the face of pure evil, a face that will haunt me for the rest of my life," her statement said. "I can honestly say I thought I was going to die and I would never see my children again."
Both women said the accused had shown no remorse since the incident. Lyons apologised through his barrister.
"Can he say it?" Ms Kelly asked.
"I can, yeah, I'm sorry for what happened," Lyons said from the dock.
The defendant's car dealership business had collapsed in the recession and a repossession order had been put on his home. Judge Hunt adjourned the case for sentencing to a date in December.
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