Costa News Spain Breaking News | English News in Spain.
As terrified tourists fled, two masked assassins killed two infamous crime bosses in front of a packed Fuengirola bar.
The two high-ranking Scottish gangsters were professionally executed just after 11.30pm on Saturday night – moments after watching Paris Saint-Germain thrash Inter Milan 5-0 in the Champions League final.
Feared Glasgow underworld figures Ross Monaghan, 43, and Eddie Lyons Jnr, 46, of the Lyons crime family were sitting outside Monaghan’s Irish Bar – owned by Monaghan – when the hooded hitmen gunned them down,
The brutal Mafia style hit sent shockwaves throughout the local community as well as internationally. It sparked fears of an escalating gang war in the Costa del Sol, not seen since Kinahan’s time.
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As families and children fled in terror from the seafront, terrified eyewitnesses described chaotic scenes.
“I was afraid that they were also going to kill me,” said a retired neighbor who saw the shooting. Malaga Hoy.
The pensioner, who lives metres from the scene, initially mistook the gunshots for fireworks: “It sounded like rockets, but they weren’t rockets, you could see it was from a shooting – it went ‘bang, bang, bang, bang!'”
Xiaowei who runs a bar next door was unloading products when the horrific event unfolded. I looked outside and saw a person pointing something before he opened fire.
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“All of a sudden, everyone ran out of the bar. Like me, a family walking past hid in my store. I called the cops from there, and we hid in my shop until they arrived.”
The shopkeeper said he had been shocked. “I didn’t even look at the face of his passenger, nor did I see whether he rode a bike or a vehicle. I only remember seeing a weapon. I was stunned, I did not know how to respond.”
Isabel Aribas, working at the Martín Playa beach bar opposite the Irish pub, initially thought the first shots were vehicle backfires.
“But we then heard more shots, and everyone came running toward us. We all knelt down as families started to come in, bringing their children.
“When you see everyone running, you think: ‘Well, those are gunshots.’ We were terrified. “I was personally very scared.”
The customer fled the store in fear when she heard at least four shots.
Spanish police sources claim that a hooded man jumped out of a car and fired at the two men in point-blank distance before fleeing with an accomplice.
The chest and abdomen wounds of both victims caused their deaths, but a third victim was also injured.
Javier Salas, deputy delegate of the Malaga government, confirmed that both men who died were British citizens with Scottish origin.
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According to high level sources Olive Press Since years, a Scottish gang conflict has been raging between rival crime family the Lyons and the Daniels.
The Scottish Sun reports that just a few weeks earlier, a rival gang meeting in Kirkintilloch (near Glasgow) had ordered the hit.
According to reports, the Daniel crime family and associates of Mark Richardson, a cocaine kingpin in prison, plotted against the two.
The Scottish Sun quoted a gangland source as saying, “The hitman was given orders to eliminate them both following the meeting.” They knew Monaghan, and Lyons could be beaten because they were complacent.
The killings are a violent escalation of Scotland’s brutal gang war, which is now international.
The violence stems from claims that Dubai-based former Rangers ultra Ross ‘Miami’ McGill was conned out of £500,000 in a cocaine deal involving fake banknotes.
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McGill, 31 years old, is accused of inciting weeks of retaliatory violence across Scotland via a group named Tamu Junto. This led to more than 40 arrests as part Police Scotland’s Operation Portaledge.
Sources say Steven Lyons, 44 was the primary intended target. However, he escaped death when the assassins hit him as he flew from Dubai to Spain.
Eddie Lyons Jnr, who lives in Spain, recently returned to Scotland to attend the funeral of 16-year-old Emily Lyons after her death from chronic health issues.
He appeared to be worried, and told family members he didn’t think he was safe enough to go back to Scotland permanently.
Lyons are also said to be associates of the Kinahan cartel – the notorious Irish mobsters who ruled the Costa del Sol with bloody mayhem a decade earlier.
Experts in gangland predict that the double execution of the two men will spark a new violence wave both in Scotland and Spain, as well as elsewhere.
A source in the underworld warned that “this is going to be a full-scale war”.
This is likely to result in further violence, whether it’s related to the ongoing Scottish feud (or another dispute).
Ross Monaghan, who was acquitted in the past of murder charges, ran the Irish bar he fell victim to. However sources state that his name is not on any official documentation.
The Spanish police have set up roadblocks along the Costa del Sol in search of the killers, but so far no arrests were made. The investigation is ongoing, and authorities are treating it like a drug-related score-settling.
