A Ballymena mother of three who stabbed her eldest son to death in "a drunken haze" wept yesterday as she was given a 31/2-year jail term, coupled with two years' probation.
Antrim Crown Court heard that afterwards a drunken Rosemary Veronica Eillott (48) told a neighbour, "God forgive me. I stabbed the bastard". She later also told police: "I hope the b------ is dead, I hope I've killed him."
Mr Justice Higgins, sitting in Belfast, said that but for the added probation order he would have jailed Eillott for five years for killing her son, David (25), last January.
He told Eillott that, despite her troubled relationship with her son, he had done her no specific harm either then or in the past. But Mr Justice Higgins accepted Eillott was drunk and suffered from psychiatric problems made worse when wrongly diagnosed with cancer.