Plea deal for dead priest's attacker

THE close friends of an Irish priest who died after a savage attack in his parish church in Florida, spoke of their sadness yesterday as it emerged that the woman responsible for his death had been granted a plea bargain.

Father Oliver Barrett, 81, originally from Kinsale, Co Cork, died at home in Ireland 11 months after he was beaten brutally with a concrete brick in the attack at St Anne’s Catholic Church in Brownsville, Florida.

Delta Sue Allen, 34, had been charged with murder, but Florida’s Chief Circuit Judge John Kuder accepted a plea deal yesterday.