A man who fatally stabbed a woman (26) while she worked at a health food shop was “so calm” and showed no emotion after he committed the atrocity, an inquest has heard.
Mairead Moran died as a result of a stab wound which caused injuries to her heart, lung, kidney and liver when she was attacked by Shane Smyth at the Holland & Barrett shop in Kilkenny city in May 2014.
Wednesday’s inquest at Kilkenny’s Coroner’s Court heard that she rang her mother to tell her she was “terrified” after Smyth turned up at the shop a month before she was killed and spat and stared at her.
Smyth (30) was found not guilty by reason of insanity at a murder trial in the Central Criminal Court last year.
Margo Moran, Mairead’s mother, said in a deposition that her daughter had been going out with Smyth for about eight months in 2005 and the last she had heard from him was in 2006.
‘Really worried’
When the two were going out together, Mrs Moran said she would collect her daughter from Kilkenny after she had gone to see him. “He would be on the phone before we got home, asking where she was and she engaged with him in this to reassure him.”
In autumn of 2005, Ms Moran moved to Kilkenny city and her parents grew “really worried” and asked her to see a counsellor, which she did a number of times.
Ms Moran “called it off with him sometime after that”.
He began ringing “into the early hours of the morning” and was told by Ms Moran’s father Peter to stop.
Ms Moran decided not to make a complaint to the Garda as she just wanted to get on with her Leaving Cert .
‘Standing over her’
Security guard, Liam Dwyer, who was working at the Market Cross Shopping Centre on the evening of the attack, said a colleague “removed a man” from the Holland & Barrett shop at about 8.23pm.
Shortly afterwards, he saw on one of the monitors Ms Moran “in a foetal position and a guy holding her by the hair”. “He was standing over her. I believe he struck her at least 11 times,” he said.
He went straight to the scene, as did his colleague, and got between Ms Moran and her attacker and told him to drop the knife. “I didn’t see any emotion in him. Not a bit. He was so calm, after what he had done,” he said.
The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence.
After the inquest, Ms Moran’s parents said the time since the tragedy has been “very painful”.
“Mairead was so precious to us, she always will be, she’ll never be forgotten and is as much a part of our lives now as she ever was,” Ms Moran’s mother said.