Young father jailed for life for neighbour's murder

A 26-year-old father of two who shot dead a neighbour whom he said had threatened to slit his daughters' throats, has been jailed for life after being found guilty of murder by unanimous verdict.

The jury of eight men and four women reached their guilty verdict in the trial of Brendan O'Sullivan, following just over two hours of deliberations at the Central Criminal Court today.

O'Sullivan had denied murdering Leslie Kenny in the front garden of his home on O'Gorman Street, Kilrush, Co Clare in July last year.

He shot the 27-year-old at close range with a double-barreled shotgun, after first confronting him over threats he had made to slit his two and five-year-old daughters' throats, shoot down his back door and put petrol in his letterbox.

Neighbours described seeing O'Sullivan standing on his garden bench and shouting at Mr Kenny, who lived a few doors down: “Come down here and we'll sort it out”

When Mr Kenny, who had 82 previous convictions and was described in court as having a “formidable reputation”, walked towards the house, O'Sullivan said his wife started screaming: “He's going to kill us.”

He told gardaí he ran upstairs to get a shotgun, and when Mr Kenny appeared at the garden, he shot him through the chest, damaging his lung and liver.

O'Sullivan then shot him a second time through the hip, before reloading and shooting him through each knee, admitting that he fired the final shot while Mr Kenny lay bleeding on the ground. He died almost instantly.

O'Sullivan was arrested that day and in his interviews with detectives, insisted he was trying to protect his family and had only wanted to scare Mr Kenny off.

He said he was terrified Mr Kenny was going to come into his house one night and carry out his threats, and that he couldn't sleep at the time and was on sleeping pills.

“All I could think of was my wife and kids” he told gardaí. “If I wanted to kill him I would have shot him in the head... I just wanted to scare him off” saying the shots had only been intended as warnings.

He repeatedly denied that he had obtained the shotgun for protection when the threats began, saying he was minding it at his cousin's request as she was afraid her estranged husband was going to kill himself.

Julie McKiernan, O'Sullivan's first cousin, confirmed in her evidence that she had asked him to take the gun from her house about three weeks before the killing.

His account to gardaí that he shot Mr Kenny from his front door, but that he kept coming towards him, was however contradicted in evidence from the State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy.

She said the first shot was fired at close range, from a distance of about 15 feet, the second while Mr Kenny was either on the ground or attempting to get up, and the last two shots “most likely” inflicted while he was lying on the ground.

The jury was told that this suggested that O'Sullivan was bearing down on Mr Kenny, whose body was found at the end of the garden.

O'Sullivan's defence counsel, Mr John Phelan SC, had asked the jury to“put yourself in the position of my client with his wife and children, and that person with the capacity for that many convictions threatening to shoot and burn them out”.

He also asked them to consider the fact that he had shot Mr Kenny at 10.30am in broad daylight in a housing estate. “This is not the attitude of a person who planned to murder someone,” he said.

But it took the jury just over two hours to reach an unanimous murder conviction.

O'Sullivan, wearing a dark suit and white shirt, nodded and responded “thank you” as Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy handed down the mandatory life sentence.

His young wife, Claire, broke down in tears and embraced him following the verdict.

Mr Kenny's stepfather, John Casey, would only say that he was glad it had “come to a closure”.

“There are no winners in this, but justice was done,” he said.