Father: ‘Shane was a pacifist and couldn’t have lived with what he had done’

THE father of Shane Clancy has said his pacifist son was “not in his right mind” when he stabbed Sebastian Creane to death and seriously wounded Sebastian’s brother and his own former girlfriend.

Patrick Clancy said he was also upset with comments from a Jesuit priest friend of the Creanes who claimed during last week that no amount of “psychobabble” could cover the brutal nature of Shane’s attack.

Shane, a teetotal 22-year-old student of theology and Irish at Trinity College, stabbed Sebastian Creane to death and seriously wounded his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Hannigan and Sebastian’s brother Dylan during anattack in the early hours of August 16 at a house in Cuala Grove in Bray.

Sebastian Creane will be laid to rest today in Co Mayo, while it is understood Jennifer Hannigan has been able to provide gardaí with a detailed account of what happened more than a week ago in Bray, where Shane Clancy also turned the knife on himself after the attack.

Patrick Clancy was among those carrying his son’s coffin last Thursday, and speaking over the weekend he said he believed Shane could not have lived with what he had done.

“I still don’t believe my son was in his right mind,” Patrick Clancy told Star Sunday.

“Shane could never have lived with what he had done. Shane was a pacifist and I don’t think he knew what rage and anger was and when it hit him it was too late. A few seconds and everything was gone.”

It is believed one avenue being investigated by gardaí is that Shane may have taken an excessive amount of his prescribed anti-depressant drugs. The results of toxicology reports will not be ready for a few weeks.

It is understood Garda sources have also expressed doubt over speculation that Shane had been stalking Ms Hannigan, with whom he ended a three-year relationship earlier this year.

It is believed he came to regret his decision to break up with Jennifer and had been intent on resuming the relationship when she began seeing Sebastian Creane.

“Shane loved Jennifer,” Patrick Clancy said. “She was everything to him. Jennifer is a beautiful girl and a beautiful person. I don’t think Shane came to terms with it when he left her.

“A broken heart is a very strange thing. I think that Shane felt angry and sad but he couldn’t express his feelings and instead suppressed them.”

As for the comments made by Fr Fergus O’Donoghue, who said mental illness was no excuse for Shane Clancy’s actions, Patrick Clancy said: “I found it very difficult to hear this from a Jesuit priest, a man supposed to be a man of God. He shouldn’t be saying something like that because as the saying goes, let the man without sin cast the first stone.”

Shane Clancy had dropped Sebastian and two of his friends home in the early hours of last Sunday before driving to a nearby 24-hour Dunnes Stores to buy a block of knives.

Patrick Clancy said: “You can’t expect anyone working in a shop at night to know what knives will be used for.”