Travellers ‘don’t intend to harm Nally’
Responding to reports that Frank Nally had to be moved to a new prison following fears over his safety, Mr Ward’s sister Sally Sweeney said the family wanted justice, not revenge.
Ms Sweeney said if she met Mr Nally, she would call him a murderer and tell him that she wished he got a life sentence.
“The law works in mysterious ways. Things would have been a lot different if John had not been a Traveller,” said Ms Sweeney.
“Mr Nally didn’t have the right to kill him. All human people let people go. You don’t fire a shot and then reload and shoot him in the back.”
Mr Nally, aged 61 and a bachelor, with a farm in an isolated area near Cross, Co Mayo, shot Mr Ward twice and beat him with a stick 20 times. He reloaded his shotgun to fire the second shot, which hit Ward in the back as he tried to run away.
The six-year sentence handed down by Mr Justice Paul Carney in the Central Criminal Court sparked outrage among the extended Ward family and among Travellers support groups.
Ms Sweeney said: “All we wanted was justice done and six years is nothing. He should have got life. My brother is dead. He’s complaining he got six years.
“From our hearts, we are devastated, I have no brother and Marie has no husband and 11 small children have no father.”
She said she had not spoken to Mr Nally but if she did, she would call him a murderer.
“I would say to Padraig Nally that he’s a murderer and that he murdered my brother. If he had told my brother to leave and get out, he would have gone. Why did he get the gun and beat him and then kill him dead? When he wounded him first, why didn’t he just let him go?”
She said that the family were coping very badly.
“They were all very upset. John was there about a car, to buy a car and it went wrong from there. Their hearts are broken over it.”
A spokesman for the Prison Service rejected claims Mr Nally had been moved to a different prison because of security fears.
“We are not aware of any threats made against him,” said the spokesman.
He said Mr Nally was moved from Mountjoy Jail because of a lack of space.
He said it was decided to send him to the Midlands Prison rather than Castlerea Prison, because it had a more suitable inmate population, in terms of age and background.
