Olivia Kelleher: Reporting of inquests doesn't leave room for sentiment
A Garda on duty at the laneway leading to the O’Sullivan family farm where three members of the family lost their lives in a shooting incident at Assolas, Kanturk, Co Cork.
Inquests are clinical affairs. They have a distinct template. The discovery of a body, postmortem, Garda investigation, cause of death, and verdict.
There isn't much room for sentiment or reflection. It is a case of reporting the facts as they are presented.
Unfortunately, those who lose their lives through murder are often defined by the circumstances of their passing and their contributions to society are forgotten.
Kanturk in Co Cork suffered a seismic shock in October 2020 when Tadg and Diarmuid O'Sullivan shot Mark O'Sullivan dead in his bedroom before ending their own lives outside the family home.
An inquest in Mallow earlier this week heard that father and son had become fixated with inheritance issues.
Anne O'Sullivan, a former nurse, wife to Tadg and mother to Diarmuid and Mark was terminally ill. Resentment had festered about who was going to be left the family farm which was in her name.
A verdict of unlawful killing was recorded in the case of Mark while the jury found that Diarmuid and Tadg had ended their own lives. Anne O'Sullivan's statements were read into the record as she passed away in April of this year.
What reporting of inquests doesn't leave room for is the lives lead by the individuals before the walls caved in around them. A time when everything was "normal".
However, statements given to gardaí gave a particular insight into the character of Mark.
Claragh Lucey recalled her fond memories of her friend. They met as colleagues at KMPG in Cork city.
Mark, who was just 26 when he passed away, had finished his Masters in Business Law FEIS in UCC and had intended to become a solicitor. Claragh said that Mark was kind and caring.
"He was extremely hard working. He was quite patient especially with his mother. He was intelligent, funny, he was sharp as a whip. "
At the time of his death Mark was a fund analyst with Northern Trust. Claragh had never met Anne but she knew through Mark that she was "fiercely proud of her sons".
"She wanted them to be well educated to go on and have careers maybe move up to senior management or be successful solicitor's in Mark's case.
She had a lot of time for Mark and Diarmuid. Mark had said he had inherited more of his Mom's character and personality whilst Diarmuid had inherited their father's."
Mark had told Claragh that his mother would have loved more children. Anne was close to her cousins particularly to the Sherlock family.
Claragh said Mark had cared for his elderly grandparents when they were sick. He was also the primary carer for his mother when she became ill.
Claragh detailed the hopes and dreams Mark had for his life.
"He wanted to travel. He wanted to go back to Greece. He had done an Erasmus year there in College. We hoped to go inter railing in Eastern Europe. “
A second friend, Shamila Rahmon, said in her statements to gardaí that she had met Mark at the University of Limerick in 2013 when they were both studying law.
Mark was "very honest, kind, generous, funny, really smart and caring as well", she said
Meanwhile, Louise Sherlock, spoke of being close to her cousin Anne O’Sullivan She told gardaí that as Anne was an only child she was referred to in their family if seven girls as the "eighth sister."
The statements given to gardaí by Anne O'Sullivan also detailed her loving relationship with Mark. The night before he was murdered Mark and Anne had given one another their "usual hug" at bedtime.
"He would have told me that he loved me and I replied 'me too.' That's the way we said good night to one another. I asked if he was going to be all right and replied that he would be fine."
Anne and Mark envisaged the worst case scenario as an argument breaking out. Mark had vowed to put in his headphones to drown out the voices of his father and brother if a verbal dispute occurred. Neither mother nor son had any inkling of the magnitude of what was going to unfold.
The inquest heard that Anne was hoping for reconciliation with her son Diarmuid. She and Mark went home after spending a fortnight with the Sherlock family in a bid to "calm" things down.
It is difficult not to ponder on what life may have been like if Anne had never become ill or Mark had decided not to return home in October of last year. The "what if's" are endless.
One of the most admirable things about Anne was that even though she woke up to the horror of losing her entire family overnight she found the strength to attend the funerals.
A woman of just 61 years old, who was already dealing with the trauma of a terminal diagnosis, she showed immense courage in the face of unimaginable tragedy.
At her funeral mass in Kanturk last April Canon Toby Pruitt said that Anne had died "before her time".
She had accepted her fate with "dignity and courage". Canon Bluitt said in an ideal world Anne would have lived a long and healthy life. However, unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world.
"The clouds that can, and do, settle over our lives sometimes rob us of fulfilment and peace, of an ordered and easy existence. They bring a darkness into our lives that we feel cannot be shaken."
"We have an added sadness, I think, that for Anne, for one family, life didn’t work out the way it might have. "
His hope for Anne was one that we would all surely share. Religious or not it is comforting to imagine she is in a place which Canon Bluitt described as being "always bright, always light. A place where there is no more weeping, no more tears.”
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