February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
A day after Longford native and Brooklyn-based NYPD officer Francis Hennessy was laid to rest, a County Clare father of three, John Kelly, was brutally gunned down on a Bronx street as he removed Christmas decorations from the front of a building where he worked as the superintendent and lived with his family.
As the Echo went to press, detectives, who, like Francis Hennessy, were born in Ireland, were leading the investigation into the shooting of Kelly, a popular figure in GAA circles and one of the star hurlers on the New York and Clare teams of the 1990s.
Hennessy died on Tuesday, Jan. 10 after collapsing while responding to an emergency call. He was interred in a Queens cemetery last Saturday.
Kelly was shot once in the back of the head on Sunday night and died shortly afterwards in a nearby hospital.
Both men were married with children.
Family and friends will be gathering in the Bronx for Kelly’s wake Wednesday and for a memorial Mass on Thursday.
Kelly, from Sixmilebridge, will be laid to rest in Ireland.