THE FAMILY of a murder victim has not been able to return home since leaving their house on the night he was shot dead in their driveway.
Samantha Dunne was giving her victim impact statement to the Central Criminal Court before her son’s killer was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.
Her son, Stephen O’Halloran (20), was sitting in his car with two friends, when two men opened fire on them, killing the father-of-one and seriously injuring the others.
David Patchell (21), Rossfield Crescent, Tallaght, admitted being one of the gunmen, who fired a total of 10 shots into the car where the friends were drinking beer and smoking joints.
The former Shamrock Rovers under-21 player pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr O’Halloran but last week a jury found him guilty by unanimous verdict. He also denied attempting to murder the deceased man’s friends, Paul Core and Anthony Harte, and to causing them serious injury.
The jury cleared him of attempted murder, but found him guilty of causing them serious harm.
Samantha Dunne broke down in the witness box as she spoke of the bond she had with her first-born son.
“We were very close. He’d go out of his way to make me laugh,” she said. “We had great conversations.” Ms Dunne was in the family home on the night of the murder and heard the shots outside.
“What I saw they had done to my son, no mother or family should see,” she said.
During his trial, Patchell had claimed a criminal gang threatened to kill him and his parents if he didn’t do it.