Kerry brothers jailed for ‘degrading and brutal’ assault on uncle

Two brothers have each been sentenced to nine-and-a-half years imprisonment, with four years suspended, for “a brutal, vicious, and degrading” attack on their uncle which left him “at death’s door” but which had no apparent motive.

The victim, Gerald Fitzgerald of Mitchels Road, Tralee, Co Kerry, was found with his jeans pulled down and blood spurting from his head.

A tennis racket had been forced into his rectum, it later emerged, and there had been damage to his liver and bladder.

The face of Mr Fitzgerald had been so injured, neighbours who found the deeply unconscious man in the back garden of his home could not tell the front of his head from the back.

Robert Kelly, aged 32, of Ogham Rian Estate, Tralee, and Tommy Kelly, aged 34, of Marian Park, Tralee, had both denied recklessly or intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Fitzgerald, aged 50, at Mitchels Road, Tralee, on November 8, 2011, sometime between 6.45pm and 7.45pm.

A jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict at the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee on May 22, after a 17-day trial.

“There was no obvious motive. The reason for the violence could not be explained,” Tom Rice, prosecuting, said yesterday during the recap of the evidence by Detective Garda James Hurley.

On the day of the assault, all three had been in the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee to do with an assault by Tommy Kelly in a nightclub in Tralee in October 2008. He was on a suspended sentence for the attack which left a man with 10 stitches in the face and was to pay compensation.

They had gone drinking first in a hotel and then to an off licence and back to Mr Fitzgerald’s house.

A tennis racket whose handle was covered in blood was found at the scene, along with a yard brush, a glass ashtray, and other “ad hoc weaponry,” Mr Rice said.

The brothers were captured on CCTV on their way to a petrol station shop shortly before 8pm for cigarettes, covered in blood and play acting fighting.

In Garda interviews, while both admitted assault, they both adamantly denied inserting the tennis racket handle, Garnet Orange, defending Robert Kelly, and David Sutton, defending Tommy Kelly, submitted.

There was a considerable amount of alcohol and probably other substances also, Mr Orange said.

Mr Fitzgerald, who was 46 at the time, had declined to give a victim impact statement and was not in court yesterday. A painter decorator, he had returned from America with his young son after he was widowed.

He was recovering from his injuries but had ongoing bowel difficulties. He had no recollection of the assault.

Philomena Fitzgerald, the mother of the victim and grandmother of Tommy and Robert Kelly, in a plea for leniency for the brothers, said she had aged 20 years since the attack. “I don’t expect to live much longer over it,” she said.

Her nephews had been “genuinely fond” of their uncle. She had not spoken to the Kelly brothers for three months over the attack but when she finally did, they cried like children.

Handing down sentence, Judge Eugene O’Kelly said he took into account the “viciousness” and the “extraordinary degrading of the victim”. “I haven’t been able to make any distinction and find each equally culpable, as did the jury.”

The judge referred to the previous assault convictions of the brothers.

Robert Kelly had assaulted a man with a wheel brace on Denny St in 2006, and in 2008 had been given a five-month suspended sentence for that.

Tommy Kelly had been given two years suspended, for the assault in the nightclub in 2008 and was to pay compensation.

However Judge O’Kelly said Robert Kelly was undergoing drug counselling, has given up alcohol and was dealing with the issue of violence in prison.

With regard to Tommy Kelly, the judge said there was the prospect of rehabilitation. A married man, living in Killarney, Co Kerry, he had a good work ethic, and was a good stepfather to his wife’s children from a previous marriage. He was a popular figure and there were sincere and glowing references handed into court.

Judge O’Kelly sentenced each brother to nine-and-a-half years but suspended the last four years in each case, and backdated the sentence to May.