Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons, murdered in the popular Spanish resort of Fuengirola, were leading members of a crime gang at war with the rival Daniel clan for decades
Ross Monaghan looked like any other parent as he joined mums and dads on the Monday morning school run.
He had just dropped his daughter off when he was approached by what appeared to be another dad pushing a buggy. But the stranger, who had a scarf and a wooly hat pulled over his face, did not have a child with him.
Instead the pram held a gun which he pulled out and fired at Monaghan, hitting him in the back as he fled. The intended target of the 2017 Glasgow shooting was later discharged from hospital.
Rather than your average dad, Monaghan, was a leading member of the Lyons crime gang. He fled to Spain a short time later where his past finally caught up with him on Saturday.
Monaghan, 43, and his gangland associate Eddie Lyons Jnr, 46, had just finished watching the Champions League final in a Costa del Sol bar when they were gunned down. Holidaymakers looked on in horror as a masked hitman brazenly stormed the beachfront pub and shot both men in the chest at close range.
The brutal double murder of two of Scotland’s most notorious gangsters was the latest chapter in a bloody feud between the Lyons network and the rival Daniel mob that has lasted over two decades.
It has led to a string of shootings and knife attacks including the murder of Michael Lyons in 2006 and Daniel enforcer Kevin “Gerbil” Carroll in 2010. A year later Monaghan was on remand in Glasgow’s HMP Barlinnie charged with Carroll’s murder when detectives issued him with a threat to life warning, known as an Osman.
One source said at the time: “Monaghan had a meeting with cops just before Christmas and was told to watch his back. Osman Warnings are only issued when an individual is believed to be at serious risk of being killed.
“Even though Monaghan is in prison, the police are taking no chances. The nature of the crime he is accused of has made him a number of enemies.”
But Monaghan was acquitted in 2012 of having any involvement in the slaughter of Gerbil, 29, who got his nickname from the character in the kid’s TV show Roland Rat.
Lyons clan associate Bully “Buff” Paterson, 45, was eventually convicted of the killing in 2015 and sentenced to 22 years.
Two years later Monaghan was lucky to survive the primary school shooting.
He fled to Spain a short time later and is said to have run the bar where he met his end in Fuengirola, Andalucia, on Saturday night. Images from the scene showed a bloody man in shorts and a T-shirt lying lifeless on a terrace of the bar.
A spokesman for the National Police in Malaga said on Sunday: “Around midnight an incident with firearms occurred in Fuengirola, specifically at an entertainment venue along the seafront. Two males died as a result from gunshot wounds … no arrests have been made so far.”
One of the victims died instantly while the other passed away at the scene a short time later. A third man was also shot and is in hospital.
In 2005 Monaghan was cleared along with Eddie’s Lyon’s brother Stephen of trying to kill three men in a St Valentine’s night attack.
Robert Anderson, Garry Brown and Graham Syne – all in their 20s – were stabbed outside the Tuscany club in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, in 2004. All were scarred for life. But Lyons and Monaghan, then 23, were cleared after key witnesses could not – or would not – identify the attackers in court.
A senior police source was quoted at the time saying: “They walked because witnesses never spoke up. Many were afraid of the Lyons family’s reputation.”
The gangland feud is said to date back to 2001 when a £20,000 consignment of cocaine disappeared from a Daniel safe house in Milton, in the north of Glasgow.
Graeme Pearson, former director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, told the BBC podcast “Gangster”: “It was alleged that members of the Lyons family group stole a delivery of drugs that were due for the Daniel family and there had been a real upset about the theft of those drugs.
“Equally, it was alleged that the Lyons family had decided that they were also retailing in the north side [of Glasgow], where the Daniel family traditionally had the upper hand. This was their territory. This was where they made profit and they wouldn’t stand for it. That couldn’t go without some response.”
Convicted heroin smuggler Jamie Daniel, who led the gang after making millions from drugs and counterfeit cigarettes died aged 58 of cancer in 2016. This sparked a new round of violence with five attempted murders in the next few months.
Robert Daniel’s car was rammed on December 8, 2016, before he was chased into a house. He was struck twice on the back of the head with what he later told police was a hatchet or a machete.
Asked in court if there was any bad blood between the two families, Robert, 29, replied: “Not that I know of.” Stephen “Bonzo” Daniel was the victim of perhaps the most chilling of all the attacks when his car was rammed in 2017 by a Volkswagen Golf in Milton.
He was chased at speeds of up to 100mph through north Glasgow before crashing off a ramp of the M8 in the Port Dundas area.
The impact left him unconscious and as he lay slumped at the wheel he was subjected to a horrific attack with bladed weapons which left him with appalling facial wounds.
Eddie Jnr and Monaghan were cleared of a vicious street attack on three men outside a bar in East Dunbartonshire which took place in April 2016.
But the trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court collapsed when two of the alleged victims said they had no memory of what had happened to them.