A man who slashed and stabbed his pregnant girlfriend as she slept and who also tried to strangle her three-year-old daughter has withdrawn his appeal against the severity of his 15-year sentence.
The appeal by Seán Walsh (24), O'Loughlin Court, Kilkenny, was listed for hearing before the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday but, when it was called, Ciarán O'Loughlin SC, for Walsh, said his client was withdrawing his appeal.
If withdrawal was his counsel's advice to Walsh, then it was "good advice", as the attack could have attracted a life sentence, Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan, presiding at the three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal, remarked.
Walsh was sentenced by Judge Olive Buttimer at Kilkenny Circuit Court to 15 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Georgette O'Carroll at her home at O'Loughlin Court in November 2004.
He also pleaded guilty to endangering the life of her three-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
Judge Buttimer sentenced Walsh to 10 years for assault causing harm to Ms O'Carroll and five years for endangering the life of her daughter.
Walsh, originally from Britain, came to Kilkenny in 2001. The trial heard Ms O'Carroll was in a relationship with him and they were expecting a child when he viciously attacked her at her home on November 9th, 2004.
The couple had watched a film in the cinema the previous night called The Grudge, which depicts a husband trying to strangle his wife. The following morning, Ms O'Carroll woke up to find herself being suffocated by Walsh. She was also headbutted by him and had a number of injuries inflicted by stabbing.
Ms O'Carroll managed to escape and discovered her daughter in the bathroom with pink trousers around her neck. At the time, she believed her daughter was dead. There was a fracture to her left elbow and bite marks to her body.