Life sentence for stabbing man over loyalist joke

A YOUNG Englishman was stabbed to death because he joked during a social night out in Cork that his father had been in a loyalist organisation — and yesterday the accused was given a life sentence for murder.

Timothy O’Driscoll, aged 34, from St Rita’s Avenue, Gurranabraher, Cork had denied a charge of murdering Lee McCarthy, aged 25, at St Rita’s Avenue on Saturday April 17, 2010.

Mr Justice Paul Carney sentenced him to the mandatory period of life imprisonment after the jury of six men and six women returned a 10-2 majority verdict after more than four hours of deliberation at the Central Criminal Court in Cork.

The key prosecution witness, Stephen Monaghan, testified in relation to the late Lee McCarthy, “He was sound, a nice fella. He said his father was LVF or something; I’d say he was only messing.”

The witness said O’Driscoll invited him and the deceased back to his house from a pub and they were drinking beer and watching music videos on the Magic Channel. “He (O’Driscoll) started dishing out these weird tablets, white tablets and pink tablets. I said ‘I know what they are, they make my tongue twist’.

“Mr McCarthy said his father was an LVF man. Mr O’Driscoll goes, ‘You are the son of a Loyalist’. He rolls up his sleeve and he goes, ‘You know what that means?’ Tiocfaidh Ár Lá was on his arm. Mr McCarthy goes, ‘What does that mean?’ Mr O’Driscoll goes, ‘Our day will come’,” Mr Monaghan said.

“Mr McCarthy went to the toilet. Mr O’Driscoll said, ‘I am going to kill him’. I thought he was messing. I said, ‘Go away and shut up, you dope, and relax, you’re the one who invited the youngfella up and he’s doing nothing out of the way’. He goes, ‘He is the son of a UVF man or LDF or whatever’.

“He (the accused) started making all these teeth expressions with his face, froth coming out of his mouth. He went and gave Mr McCarthy a dig around the facial area. He grabbed him around the neck. I goes, ‘Leave him alone’,” Mr Monaghan testified.

The witness said he saw the defendant sticking a sharp object into Mr McCarthy’s arm. Mr Monaghan said he then left the house.

Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster said the body was found in a pool of blood in a coal shed behind the house. She described six stab wounds to the neck and back and several more incised wounds to the neck, right hand and arm. Two wounds were described as fatal.

O’Driscoll’s doctor Richard Kennefick said he had frequently been admitted to hospital for psychiatric treatment, including occasions after he had cut his own wrists and chest.