A 23-YEAR-OLD man who killed another man in an unprovoked attack during which he was dragged along a road under a car after being attacked with a machete has been jailed for nine years at the Central Criminal Court.
In sentencing Angelo O’Riordan to 10 years, with the final year suspended, for the manslaughter of Aidan Myers, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy described the December 2006 killing in Co Louth as “quite shocking”.
He said Mr Myers and his friend Gearóid O’Donnell had been two law-abiding citizens and were completely innocent parties minding their own business when they were set upon by O’Riordan and a gang of men and assaulted “in a most violent fashion.”
O’Riordan, of Point Road, Bellurgan, Dundalk, originally went on trial for murder last July, but when the case was in its third week, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter after his girlfriend was declared a hostile witness and was about to be cross-examined by lawyers for the prosecution.
He also pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Mr O’Donnell, who died in July 2007 from an underlying medical condition.
O’Riordan was sentenced to three years for the assault, to run concurrent with the manslaughter sentence.
The court heard that Mr Myers and Mr O’Donnell had been driving into Dundalk together on December 12th, 2006, and were at Faughart when their car was rammed from behind.
Thinking it was an accident, they got out to assess the damage and were attacked by a gang of four men, two of whom were wielding machetes.
O’Riordan, who was part of this gang, got into a Mitsubishi that had been hijacked earlier that evening, and as Mr Myers lay injured on the ground, rammed it into Mr O’Donnell’s Astra, causing it to run over Mr Myers and drag him along the road for a distance of 50 yards.
He was rushed to Louth County Hospital after passers-by raised the alarm, but died shortly afterwards from multiple rib fractures, trauma to the liver and haemorrhaging, followed by several heart attacks.
Mr Justice McCarthy said he was particularly struck by a part of the Myers’ family’s victim impact statement, where they described sitting around Aidan’s body in a small hospital room thinking “please, oh please, no”.
He said O’Riordan’s actions had been “morally reprehensible” and he regarded the crime as very high on the scale of manslaughter.
He also referred to the fact that a few weeks after the killing, O’Riordan was sentenced to two years’ jail for dangerous driving and reckless endangerment after hijacking a car, dragging a petrol pump attendant along the road, and ramming into another vehicle injuring two people.
But he said he could not take that, or his string of other convictions, into consideration, nor could he sentence O’Riordan on the basis that he had intended to kill or cause serious injury.
He backdated the nine-year sentence to May 2009, when O’Riordan went into custody.
The father-of-one smiled before he was led away from the courtroom.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Myers’ father, Tom Myers, said the family was happy with the sentence. “We think the crime deserved the sentence.”