Woman avoids jail after attack on murderer’s sister

A Limerick woman, whose brother was convicted of a double murder, received a fractured skull and was stabbed in the face when she was set upon by a gang of other women on the doorsteps of the Limerick district courthouse.

The woman who led the attack, Winifred O’Donoghue, aged 29, of St Brendan’s Street, St Mary’s Park, was a friend of a woman who was one of the two people murdered, Limerick Circuit Court heard yesterday.

During the assault in Jun 2011, some months after the murders, the woman who was set upon received a fractured skull and a stab wound to the face.

She had gone to court to answer a summons for not wearing a car seatbelt. As she walked up the courthouse steps, O’Donoghue and at least two other women staged an attack.

State prosecutor John O’Sullivan said it was not being alleged that O’Donoghue had caused the stab wound. However, O’Donoghue led the attackers and struck the first blow, he said.

Armed detectives on duty at the courthouse ran to the scene and arrested those involved before the injured woman was taken to hospital.

Garda Michael Fitzgerald said that, during the attack, O’Donoghue kept shouting to their victim that she would kill her and cut her throat.

Mark Nicholas, defending, said tensions were high at the time of the attack due to the double murder. A friend of O’Donoghue was one of the two murder victims and O’Donoghue was addicted to heroin at the time, he said.

Garda Fitzgerald accepted that O’Donoghue’s behaviour had improved in recent years and she had phoned the victim to apologise for her actions.

She had convictions for shop-lifting, the court heard.

Judge Carroll Moran said it was a very bad assault, in which the victim received a serious head injury.

He said O’Donoghue had thrown the first punch and he took into account that Garda Fitzgerald said her conduct had improved in recent times.

He imposed a three-year suspended sentence and bound O’Donoghue to the peace.