Victim's family afraid to return to home after murder

The family of a murder victim has not been able to return home since leaving their house with just the clothes on their backs the night he was shot dead in their driveway.

Samantha Dunne was giving her victim impact statement to the Central Criminal Court before her son’s killer was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.

Her 20-year-old son, Stephen O’Halloran, was sitting in his car with two friends, when two men opened fire on them, killing the father-of-one and seriously injuring the others.

David Patchell (aged 21) of Rossfield Crescent, Tallaght admitted being one of the gunmen, who fired a total of 10 shots into the car where the friends were drinking beer and smoking cannabis.

The former Shamrock Rovers U-21 player pleaded not guilty to murdering Stephen O’Halloran, but last week a jury found him guilty by unanimous verdict.

The apprentice plumber also denied attempting to murder the deceased man’s friends, Paul Core and Anthony Harte, and to causing them serious injury. The jury cleared him of attempted murder, but found him guilty of causing them serious harm.

Samantha Dunne broke down in the witness box as she spoke of the bond she had with her first-born son.

“We were very close. He’d go out of his way to make me laugh,” she said. “We had great conversations.”

Ms Dunne was in the family home on the night of the murder and heard the shots outside.

“What I saw they had done to my son, no mother or family should see,” she said.

“On January 19, 2009, we left our home with only the clothes on our backs and have never returned, for reasons I’m sure you understand,” she added. “I don’t go out of the house much now.”

She said Mr O’Halloran’s son was just three when his father was shot. He lived just three doors away and was always in and out of her house before her family had to move.

Mr O’Halloran’s grandparents and girlfriend, Mairéad, were devastated and finding it hard to move on, she said.

“What I miss most is all the laughs we had. He was always joking, telling me he loved me,” she sobbed.

“I just can’t accept what happened. My son, my baby is gone and my life will never be the same,” she said. “I love you Stephen, from your Mam and Dad.”

Mr Core and Mr Harte didn’t attend court, but Tom O’Connell SC, prosecuting, read victim impact statements they had prepared.

Mr Core said the bullet that was still lodged in his back continued to cause him pain. He said he had attended 10 counselling sessions and had difficulty sleeping since the shooting.

He had been social, outgoing and had no worries before the attack but has now distanced himself from previous friendships and spends most of his time with his family and girlfriend.

“I feel like a prisoner in my own home. I rarely go out,” he said. “I feel like my life is on hold until this is all over.”

He also said he had lost a good friend in Stephen O’Halloran.

Mr Harte said he still gets flashbacks of the shooting about once a month and takes sleeping tablets every night. It was a year and a half before he was passed fit to work and so his standard of living suffered, he added.

During his trial, Patchell had argued that he had no choice in the shooting.

He claimed that a criminal gang threatened to kill him and his parents if he didn’t do it. He said the gang had wrongly accused him of taking €5,000 worth of cocaine and this was how he had to clear his debt.

Brendan Grehan SC, defending, asked Mr Justice Barry White to take his client’s youth and remorse into account.

Mr Justice White imposed the mandatory life sentence for Mr O’Halloran’s murder.

“You participated in a vicious gun attack of three innocent and defenceless young men,” he said.

He said the appropriate sentence for the crimes on the two survivors would be ten years each before considering mitigation.

He imposed a sentence of seven years for each of those crimes to run concurrently with the life sentence.

He backdated all three sentences to the date of Patchell’s arrest in April 2009.