Parents devastated by brutal murder of son

The parents of a young man savagely murdered by a teenage car thief have spoken of their devastation at their son’s loss.

Musician Gavin O’Connor, 22, was sleeping on the back seat of his car after leaving a concert in the early hours of the morning in June 2011 when Conor McClelland, then aged 19, broke into it and drove off.

McClelland stopped the car some distance away, fetched a number of rocks from the roadside, and smashed his victim’s skull in before dragging him on to the road and driving over him in an attempt to make his injuries look like a car accident.

The Meath guitarist was barely alive when emergency services found him. He died in hospital hours later.

Parents Gerry and Helena described their horror at seeing their son in the mortuary with unimaginable injuries. “The inside of the car was like a slaughterhouse,” said Gerry.

“It took him 12 hours to die. His head was three times the size of what it should have been. We were devastated.

“We held his arm and it was warm but his head was destroyed. It was the worst day of our lives. He was destroyed and we will never get over it.”

McClelland, from Monaghan, was sentenced to life in prison seven weeks ago for murdering Gavin near Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, in June 2011.

The O’Connors told RTÉ’s there were aspects of the case that added to their grief.

The defendant had 21 previous convictions in the year before his arrest and other offences he committed before the age of 18 that could not be mentioned in court.

They said a garda told them that, given McClelland’s past, it had been “only a matter of time” before he killed someone.

They also were incredulous when McClelland pleaded not guilty to the murder charge and that his defence team tried to argue that Gavin’s death was manslaughter.

“He offered no explanation and in my opinion has shown no remorse,” said Helena. She said he claimed he was drunk, but CCTV footage showed McClelland heading towards Gavin’s car without staggering or any other signs of inebriation.

The couple said they felt extremely isolated during the trial in February, which took place at a special sitting of the Central Criminal Court in Monaghan instead of its usual Dublin location.

They said that, despite the horrific nature of what happened to Gavin, the trial got little media attention outside of the local area because it coincided with the start of the trial of three Anglo Irish Bank executives.

The family have been hit again by tragedy as they lost their older son, Patrick, 33, in a car accident after Gavin’s death.

“Patrick was our rock from when Gavin died,” said Gerry. “We have one daughter left, married and living in Australia with her husband and two children.”

He said he did not know how he and his wife kept going. “We hold hands every evening and we say, ‘How did we get this far?’”