Man guilty of assault on day of daughter’s funeral

A father whose four-year-old daughter died found himself facing sentencing yesterday on a charge of assault causing harm to a man he met in Cork City in the hours after the funeral.

Sinead Behan, barrister for the accused, Paul Martin, said yesterday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that Martin’s daughter had died two weeks earlier.

“This was day of his daughter’s funeral,” said Ms Behan. “He had no previous convictions and this assault was out of character for him. He had an awful lot of alcohol on the night.”