There, however, the similarities end. By the time he reached 14 years of age . . . the same time as Cleary (12) was preparing to enter secondary school . . . Foster opted out of his own future. He developed a reckless attitude; the aggressive and aimless mentality adopted by so many young men in the ever-expanding housing estates of west Dublin.

Last Saturday, the path in life chosen by Foster finally brought him into contact with Cleary. One was celebrating the birthday of a friend, the other was embarking on a night of rampant drug abuse.

Both would die . . . one the victim of a random act of violence, the other a victim of a destiny he himself chose.

Dwayne Foster was no stranger to the inside of a garda interrogation cell. For almost a decade he had been in and out of the judicial system, racking up 28 convictions for a variety of offences. His criminal career began exactly nine years ago, in March 1997, when he was convicted following a dispute.

By his late teens, Foster had developed an obsession with cars . . . an obsession that was to land him in further trouble. In 1999 he came before the courts again, this time for two counts of car theft and criminal damage, for which he was given the option of 150 hours of community service or three months in jail. Foster was soon reluctantly spending his days working in the community.

Over the next six years Foster was to become a regular feature in the district courts, where he was brought up on a range of motoring offences, as well as receiving one conviction in April 2001 for handling stolen property.

The last, reckless weekend But Foster had a habit of not obeying the courts.

In February 2002 he was banned from driving after being caught without a licence. Four months later, however, he was back before the courts on further motoring offences. He was banned from driving for one year, but just nine months later he was again charged with driving without a licence.

On that occasion, however, in March 2003, Foster decided not to bother turning up at court and a warrant was issued for his arrest. In November 2003 he was again charged with driving with no insurance, and again he failed to present himself in court. This trend continued, and in February this year the courts issued another warrant for his arrest, the fifth to have been issued against Foster.

That arrest warrant was still hanging over Dwayne Foster's head on Saturday as he began a weekend of such reckless drug abuse that it would prove to be his last. In all likelihood, Foster was already high on drugs by the time Donna Cleary kissed her three-year-old child goodnight and made her way to the Innis Fail GAA club in nearby Balgriffin.

The club is regularly rented out for private functions and on this particular night a friend was hosting a 40th birthday party. According to one party-goer who spoke to the Sunday Tribune, the night was as you would expect any birthday celebration . . . drinking, dancing and catching up with old friends. There was a good crowd at the event and it was very good-natured.

Regulars at the northside GAA club knew Donna Cleary to see her in the company of friends, even though she was not involved in the club herself, and remembered her as pleasant and very pretty.

Clouded by drugs So enjoyable was the night that the guests did not want it to end. As the GAA club closed its shutters around midnight, a fleet of taxis transported the crowd to 17 Adare Green in Coolock, where the party continued in full swing. The house stood out on the street and appeared misleadingly larger than neighbouring homes, even though a granny-flat takes up the left side of the property.

The house owners prepared for a long night with cans of drink and food as the guests returned from the GAA club. Described as "respectable, good people" by one local garda last week, they could have had no expectation of what was to happen at their home.

Dwayne Foster attempted to gain entry to the house, claiming he had arranged to meet friends inside. He was already on a cocktail of drugs and, according to eye-witnesses, was completely out of control.

He was told that he would not be allowed to join the party and following a brief scuffle, in which Foster threw a plant pot through a window, he walked away. As he did, he warned the guests that he would be back. Foster was known locally for harbouring a temper which grew from his unpredictability.

Drugs had clouded his mind and it was not possible to know what he was thinking from one minute to the next.

As one local source said, "Dwayne was completely wild. He was so mixed up in drugs that he was essentially crazy".

Foster gathered together two friends and a 9mm pistol and drove back to the house. One senior garda source told the Sunday Tribune that Foster is likely to have obtained the pistol earlier for a different purpose, for as little as 200 plus a bit extra for the bullets. He parked 35 metres down the street rather than directly in front of the house where a wall and iron-railings obscured a direct view. Foster got out of the vehicle. He leaned across the bonnet of the car and rested the gun in his firmly-cupped hands to take aim.

He had a direct view of the right side of the house, where the illuminated window was mixed with the dark shapes of the party-goers inside. He squeezed the trigger and cracked off five shots.

One bullet lodged in the aluminium window frame. Two exploded into the masonry on inside walls. One struck an outside wall block. One bullet struck Donna Cleary in the chest.

The house erupted into screams as the young woman lay bleeding profusely on the carpet of the livingroom. Though rushed to Beaumount hospital, Donna Cleary died within two hours after losing consciousness.

Within hours, Dwayne Foster and two associates arrived at a farmhouse in the Curragh. It is believed that they knew at this stage that Cleary was dead.

Foster spent Sunday in the same way as he had spent the previous day . . . consuming a wide variety of drugs. He had just graduated from small-time crook to murderer.

When Dwayne Foster pulled the trigger on Saturday night, killing Donna Cleary, he was on the run from the gardai. But in Dublin you do not have to run very far to evade capture. There are almost 2,000 unexecuted bench warrants in north-west Dublin alone. Gardai in the area simply cannot cope with the growing propensity in the area for violent anti-social behaviour.

'A dangerous little hood' Murder rates across Dublin are rising. Indeed, Cleary's personal life was not untouched by serious violence before her path crossed with Foster.

Two years ago Jason Larkin, the father of her child, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing of Patrick Costello.

On the night that Cleary's boyfriend plunged a knife into Costello's chest, he also committed a series of indiscriminate assaults against a number of strangers. He also slashed the tyres of a car he believed belonged to his victim's sister.

When Larkin, from Ravensdale Road, East Wall, was convicted of murder in the central criminal court in April 2004, Donna Cleary wept openly at the back of the court.

Foster had also seen the inside of court, but he was by no means the worst. Declan Curran was an associate of Foster's. A chronic drug user, Curran was notoriously violent, acting as an enforcer for drug gangs. As well as his role in armed robberies, Curran was believed to have been personally responsible for at least two murders. Like Foster, Curran died in garda custody of natural causes.

Like Foster, he was just 24 years of age.

Although it has been speculated that Foster too was involved in armed robberies, local sources say that he was only on the fringes of serious crime.

"He was a tough guy and he was totally unpredictable but he wasn't regarded as the Godfathertype criminal some of the papers have portrayed him as, " said one source.

"He was a dangerous little hood but car theft was his main interest. It's possible that he would have been involved in armed robbery but only for the buzz, not because he viewed himself as a career criminal."

The fact that a relatively low level criminal such as Foster had easy access to firearms serves to highlight the growing problem of weapon proliferation in west Dublin.

That he could easily easily make the transition to drug-fuelled murderer serves to highlight the uphill battle facing the authorities in that area.

Leagues of criminality By 20 years of age Foster had developed throat cancer, which further aided his slide into the underworld. According to a local source who knew him, his illness made him "more carefree" about the repercussions of his actions. Despite his family trying to settle him down, Foster's only ambition in life was to take drugs and steal cars.

Wayne Harte and Jeffrey Finnegan were old pals of Foster's. Both had been raised in Finglas but, for very different reasons, neither had been around for a few years. Harte's family moved to Clonee in Co Meath a number of years ago, although Harte still maintained contact with his old friends.

Finnegan, like Foster, had fallen into a life of petty crime and by the time he was in his mid-teens was associating with a bad crowd. He was still a teenager when he was caught with a quantity of drugs and sentenced to six years in jail. He was released from prison last year. Like Foster, Finnegan comes from a hard-working family who were left feeling powerless as their son descended into a life of crime. They had hoped that the time in prison would reform him and the signs had been encouraging. He had talked of "growing up" in jail and resented the fact that he missed much of his youth due to his associations with criminal elements.

"He wasn't in the same league as Foster", said a source. "Finnegan's problem was getting drunk and fighting. He was aggressive but he was a lot more harmless than some of the others. He would be tagging along more than anything."

Finnegan, together with Harte, was with Foster when gardai surrounded a farmhouse in the Curragh on Sunday evening. He was subsequently released from garda custody after an application to continue holding him was processed 25 minutes too late.

He may not be arrested again for questioning, although he could be rearrested if gardai believed there was sufficient evidence to charge him.

Whatever course the garda investigation takes next is irrelevant for Dwayne Foster and Donna Cleary. This morning, their families will still be mourning the loss of two young parents born into north-west Dublin a little over 20 years ago.

Two young people born into similar circumstances who chose separate paths. One killed by a stray bullet; one killed by wanton self-destruction.

Murder, rape, theft: the social whirlwind of bail

OVER 10,000 serious offences were committed by people who were out on bail in 2004 and 2005, including murders, attempted murders, assault and sexual attacks.

A breakdown of new bail figures shows that 12 murders were committed in the past two years by people who were out on bail at the time they committed the killings. Over 750 drug offences were committed by people on bail in the same period.

In addition to this, 58 rapes and sexual assaults were carried out in 2004 and 2005 by people who were on release from detention at the time they carried out the attacks against women.

The greatest single category of serious offences committed by those on bail was theft . . . with over 5,700 such offences carried out in the past two years . . . over 2,840 committed in 2004 and over 2,900 thefts by people on bail in 2005.

Despite these new figures, justice minister Michael McDowell said the number of individuals on temporary release has actually fallen since the Rainbow Coalition government left office in 1997.

In a Dail debate on bail last month, McDowell said that at one point during the term of office of the Rainbow Coalition, the number of prisoners on temporary release reached an all time high of 20% of all prisoners.

"As a result of the action of this government, this socalled revolving door system operated by the Rainbow Coalition has been stopped and the percentage of the prison population on temporary release now is approximately 2.3%, " he said.

In 2004, 5,306 headline offences were committed by those on bail; the figure was 5,456 for 2005.

The 20 homicide offences are made up of nine murders, one manslaughter and 10 threats of murder. There were 37 murders and eight manslaughters in 2004 . . . a total of 45 offences. These murder and manslaughter cases represent 22% of the total number of murders and manslaughters in the year. Legislative provisions for the granting of bail are very stringent. The 16th Amendment of the Constitution provides for the refusal of bail to a person charged with a serious offence where it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent the commission of a serious offence by that person. The Bail Act 1997 gave effect to the amendment and tightened up the bail regime generally.

Furthermore, the Criminal Justice Act 1984 provides that any sentence of imprisonment passed on a person for an offence committed shall be consecutive on any sentence passed on him or her for a previous offence.

The minister has asked the garda authorities for more information on the latest bail figures. He said that while the offences which were committed by those on bail were serious offences, there was not enough information to say what proportion of those who committed the offences had been on bail for alleged serious offences as opposed to minor criminal acts.