A MAN has been sentenced to life imprisonment after he was convicted of the murder of an Englishman, whose body was found with multiple stab wounds in a garden shed at the back of the accused’s house in Cork city.
Timothy O’Driscoll (34) had denied the murder of Lee McCarthy (25) at his family home at St Rita’s Avenue in Gurranebraher on April 17th, 2010, but he was convicted yesterday following a two-week trial at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork.
The jury of six men and six women took more than four hours to find O’Driscoll guilty by a majority of 10 to two.
Mr Justice Paul Carney imposed the mandatory life sentence on O’Driscoll amid emotional scenes at the Washington Street courthouse.
Afterwards, Mr McCarthy’s mother, Karen Roberts, and his younger brother, Daniel Roberts, spoke of their relief at the verdict and said they felt that justice had been done, given the brutal manner in which their son and brother had been killed.
Ms Roberts said her son had been diagnosed with autism at the age of five, which made him very trusting of people and he never saw any malice in anyone, which made him vulnerable. “He was the sweetest man,” she said.
Stephen Monaghan had told the trial of how O’Driscoll had dished out “weird tablets” after he had returned with Mr McCarthy to O’Driscoll’s house at St Rita’s Avenue for some drinks and how O’Driscoll reacted to Mr McCarthy saying his father was in the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
O’Driscoll exclaimed: “You are the son of a loyalist!” He then rolled up his sleeve and showed him a tattoo saying “Tiocfaidh ár lá” and asked Mr McCarthy if he knew what that meant. When he said he didn’t, O’Driscoll said it meant: “Our day will come”.
When Mr McCarthy went to the toilet, O’Driscoll said he was going to kill him. Although he (Mr Monaghan) thought he was only joking, O’Driscoll bumped Mr McCarthy when he returned from the toilet and hit him in the face before grabbing him by the neck.
He said Mr McCarthy did not fight back or cry out. “Timmy was doing all the roaring. He is schizophrenic, he would cut himself up from time to time . . . I knew him to go into third gear from time to time but to go into fourth gear even surprised me.”
Mr Monaghan said he shouted upstairs to O’Driscoll’s mother, but that O’Driscoll said to stop or he would kill him and when he saw O’Driscoll stick something sharp into Mr McCarthy’s arm, he left the house.
O’Driscoll told gardaí he didn’t “know what the f*** I did, I just lost it” and he later told them: “It was only me, so it must have been me. I would love to say sorry to the person’s family and everything. I still don’t know what happened. I hope it haunts me forever.”
When O’Driscoll was originally questioned by gardaí at his house as to what had happened, he told them that Mr McCarthy had broken into the house and he found him standing by his mother’s bed armed with a knife so he threw him down the stairs and locked him in the shed.
When told by gardaí that Mr McCarthy had been stabbed 11 times, including on the arms, suggesting that he was trying to defend himself, O’Driscoll said that “only an animal could do a thing like that”.
“I threw him in the shed to make sure he could not get out. I was panicking, I didn’t know what to do,” said O’Driscoll.