A Dublin man has been found guilty by a jury of the manslaughter of a Limerick man in the early hours of the morning at a petrol service station near Heuston Station.
William McDonnell (39), of Mary Aikenhead House, James's Street, has been remanded in custody for sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on June 19th.
He was convicted by the jury after almost five hours' deliberations on day six of the trial of the unlawful killing of Thomas Maloney (27) from Cosgrave Park, Limerick, on May 3rd, 2002. McDonnell denied the charge and the jury was told he acted in self-defence.
A co-accused, Francis Kenny (44), of Basin Street Flats, who pleaded guilty earlier to a manslaughter charge, is also scheduled for sentence on June 19th.
Det Insp Gabriel O'Gara told prosecuting counsel Mr Fergal Foley that while McDonnell had appeared for all hearings, gardaí objected to a remand on continuing bail. He said McDonnell had 29 previous convictions, including four for violence, from 1974 to 2001.
Judge Yvonne Murphy remanded McDonnell in custody. Kenny is on bail pending sentence. Members of the victim's family cried in court and embraced when the jury returned its verdict.
The charge arose out of an incident at the Statoil Service Station, Ushers Quay some hours after Mr Maloney missed his train back to Limerick on April 21st, 2002.
Mr Maloney (27), was removed first to St James's Hospital and then to Beaumont Hospital where he died died 12 days later.
Dr Marie Cassidy, Deputy State Pathologist, said Mr Maloney died of complications arising out of "severe brain damage from which he was unlikely to make any significant recovery". She said his brain had been "severely and irreparably damaged".
Mr John Copperthwaite, part of a father-son musical act who gave his stage name, John Stone, to gardaí at the scene, told the jury he saw McDonnell sitting on the victim's chest and beating his head on the ground while encouraging Kenny several times to "kick him in the head".
He said Kenny did so while Mr Maloney lay motionless underneath McDonnell. He appeared unable to defend himself.
The jury was told that Mr Maloney had been in the habit of coming to Dublin on the train from Limerick and taking the next train back. On the night of the incident he had come to Dublin on the six o'clock train in the evening and had planned to take the next one back. However, he missed it and he remained at a bar in Heuston Station for a while before heading into Dublin city centre. He was returning back to Heuston in the early hours of the morning when he stopped off at the filling station and got into the fight which led to his death.
The sales assistant at the garage said she remembered Mr Maloney asking for a bottle of white wine, a product which the shop did not serve. She then became busy with other customers and shortly afterwards heard two men fighting. One of them was Mr Maloney. She called gardaí.
Her male colleague had just gone on his break and said he saw the fight on the CCTV monitor in the back office of the filling station. The jury also heard that Mr Maloney may have drunk 16 pints that night and had continued to want to fight.
Mr Noel O'Connor, who trained Mr Maloney as a butcher, said the deceased was "stone cold sober" when he left work that evening around 5:30 p.m. to catch the train.
He said Mr Maloney was "one of the nicest young men you could meet in this day and age" and had been honest, trustworthy and dependable for the 12 years he had worked for him.