Originally from Gorey in Co Wexford, Conor O'Brien was working in Leixlip in the summer of 2021. He had moved into a studio at the back of his cousin’s house in Enfield and was due to start an apprenticeship as a blacksmith in Limerick the following week.
On the evening of 26 August, he ordered a pizza and left an instruction for the delivery driver not to knock on the door of his cousin’s house at the front, but to come around the back to the studio.
He texted his cousin to let her know and at around 8.20pm, Earl McKevitt, from Avondale Park in Blanchardstown, who was working in the area as a pizza delivery man, arrived.
A gunman, drug dealer and violent criminal with 39 previous convictions in Ireland and in the UK, McKevitt took out a pistol and shot Conor O’Brien, once in the chest.
The 19-year-old’s body remained at the scene overnight until he was found by his cousin, who was bringing her dogs out for a walk.
She had put them in the car and began to drive off when she became uneasy after she noticed something and came back. Conor O’Brien was found lying face down wearing a dressing gown and runners.
The emergency services arrived around 7am on 27 August 2021 and gardaí at Trim commenced a murder investigation.
Relatives told them they had heard a bang the night before and saw a man running but thought nothing of it. Other witnesses saw a car reverse out and got a partial registration. Gardaí searched the area, but no gun was found.
Detective Sergeant Lee Gavin said they discovered that Conor had ordered a pizza the night before and that McKevitt had delivered it.
CCTV footage showed him travelling to and from the scene, but his behaviour changed after the murder. He had changed from a top into a hoodie and baseball cap and parked the car around the back of the pizza restaurant instead of the usual front.
It was half a kilometre from Conor's home. McKevitt continued working that night and made nine more deliveries till around 11.30pm. He also went to the off-licence for himself.
When gardaí contacted him he said he couldn’t remember, then said he delivered a pizza to a man in a robe. He was asked to come to Trim Garda Station.
He said he was travelling to Carlow with his partner and her son on a planned break, but he agreed to travel back on Saturday, the following day to make a voluntary statement.
McKevitt hid the gun in the bushes outside the Talbot Hotel in Carlow at around 11pm on Friday night, 27 August, before he made himself available to gardaí in Trim the following day.
He told them he had handed the pizza to Conor O’Brien and left. His car was seized and that evening he went back to Carlow.
McKevitt began drinking heavily. He drank in the bar in the Talbot Hotel and at one stage stayed in the toilet for over an hour.
He retrieved the gun, came out of the toilet at 10pm and went back into the bar and asked for a drink.
He was refused and the manager was called. McKevitt then opened his jacket, showed the manager the gun and told him: "You serve me or I’ll use this."
The manager "skillfully" manoeuvred McKevitt to a different part of the bar away from other people, Senior Counsel John Fitzgerald said, and gave him a drink.
This allowed other staff to call gardaí. When they arrived and searched him, they found the gun and a knife on him. It was the gun he had used to shoot Conor O’Brien.
McKevitt told gardaí he had the gun for his own protection and needed it for his work as a delivery man.
Det Garda Ian Roche said he told them he had been trained by a person who was "the number 1 marksman in Ireland" and told gardaí he thought he had ADHD and schizophrenia, but had never been diagnosed.
He was subsequently assessed and a psychiatrist found no evidence of mental illness.
Detectives from Trim then arrived to question McKevitt about the murder and the 51-year-old father-of-three admitted what he had done.
"On that delivery I shot him, I f***** up," he said.
He said he had made an error. He should have knocked on the shed at the back, but he didn’t read the docket.
He also described Conor O’Brien as wearing a bathrobe with a circle that looked like a target.
He told them he thought he was there to do the deliveries, to shoot Conor O'Brien. "Shooting people" was part of his job, he said but he wouldn’t expand on that.
During the course of his garda interviews, he apologised to the O’Brien family and expressed regret for what he had done. "I apologise wholeheartedly," he said.
History of violence
Earl McKevitt was born in the Coombe Hospital in 1971. He went to school in Drimnagh in Dublin, but left at 16 and worked in a bakery before he began committing serious crimes.
He has previous convictions for robbery, theft, possession of an imitation firearm, racially aggravated violence, intimidation of witnesses, arson, road traffic, production of an article in the course of a dispute, public order, no driving licence, no insurance and two for possession of drugs with intent to supply.
His defence counsel Bernard Condon said his convictions are consistent with drugs and alcohol abuse and that drink was a factor "around this event".
McKevitt was in a relationship with a woman who worked in Enfield and lived in Carlow. He has three children, now in their 30s, from a previous relationship. His mother, father and two sisters are still alive.
His father wrote a note in which he said his son was "normally a good lad." "He doesn’t know why this happened. He is guilt-ridden and full of remorse," he said.
McKevitt's apology was repeated in court.
"A terrible thing was done, terrible consequences flow. There is nothing I can say to offer a further explanation," his defence counsel said.
"Strange answers, bizarre thinking. He made full admissions and pleaded guilty. It was very strange behaviour and he has not been diagnosed with a condition to allow him rely on mental illness as a defence."
Earl McKevitt claimed he needed the gun for work as a delivery driver and as protection, but there was no evidence he was under any threat from anyone.
He had never been given a Garda Information Message (GIM), which is a formal warning by gardaí that his life could be in danger.
'Inexplicable and shocking'
Conor O’Brien's family did not wish to make a victim impact statement.
However, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said it was not necessary for the family to do so.
Conor O'Brien was murdered, he said, and the loss of a young man on the cusp of life was "unspeakable".
"The small insight to his life with his family, his prospects, his hopes, his career as he planned it, a blacksmith’s job, a trade, yet inexplicably and shockingly he was shot having ordered a pizza," the judge said.
"It’s unspeakable.
"There was some non-reading of a direction on leaving a pizza some view taken by McKevitt that he had messed up in some way.
"He gives a very strange account of how he came to pull the gun and use it. He put a bullet in the chamber to load it and fire it.
"He had it for a number of years and got it from a person he didn’t name."
The judge said McKevitt’s behaviour in the Talbot Hotel was "clearly frightening for the manager and staff of hotel".
"The manager dealt with it very coolly and courageously," he said.
Earl McKevitt was sentenced to life in prison.
