Assailants reportedly disguised as police officers stormed the Regency Hotel in north Dublin as a weigh-in for the World Boxing Organisation European lightweight title clash took place last Friday, 5 February.
In a Facebook post João Bento, who lives in Olhão and is originally from Faro, said “I have just received sad, sad news. There has just been an attack here in the hotel where I am in Ireland, there is one dead, two seriously injured and three injured.”
Bento, who was due to contend in the WBO ‘Clash of the Clans’ fight, claimed “I saw everything with my own eyes. I saw the man who died, the ‘pirates’ (…) the shotguns turning on me; me and my team only had time to crouch down and hide.”
He added the weigh-in was cancelled and thanked “God for getting out alive.”
According to the Guardian it is understood the targets of the attack were key members of a Dublin criminal gang run by a notorious Irish gangster who controls a drug smuggling empire from Spain’s Costa del Sol.
The dead man was known by Irish police to be involved in organised crime.
There are now fears, the Guardian reports, that the shooting will spark a bloody north-side versus south-side gangland war in the Irish capital.