Road-rage killer has sentence reduced

A motorist who killed another in a “road rage homicide” has had his prison sentence reduced by the Court of Appeal.

Karl Donohoe, aged 33, of Fisherman’s Wharf, Ringsend, Dublin 4, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Ray Bates at the junction of Tritonville Road and Sandymount Road on September 26, 2010.

He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment with the final two suspended by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court on April 23 2012.

The Court of Appeal found that the sentence represented “a category of gravity” unwarranted by the facts and reduced his term by two years.

Mr Bates, aged 49 and from England, had spent five-and-a-half hours drinking prior to the incident and garda evidence was that he was tailgating Donohoe, who had his two-year-old daughter in the back of his vehicle. An altercation occurred, resulting in Donohoe hitting Bates with a hurley a number of times. He died in hospital on September 30, having suffered from haemophilia, which contributed to his death though not amounting to a defence.