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.