A 37-year-old homeless man was today jailed for six years after he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his partner who drowned when he pushed her into the River Lee following a row during a drinking session.
Greg Holt, with an address care of the Simon Community in Cork but originally from Drogheda, Co Louth, had pleaded guilty last year to the unlawfully killing of Marion O'Leary (54) at Albert Quay in Cork on October 18th 2007.
Det Garda David Callaghan told Cork Circuit Criminal Court how Holt had met Ms O'Leary on October 17th and they spend the day drinking a substantial quantity of alcohol inside the railings at Albert Quay when a dispute broke out between them shortly after midnight.
Holt admitted punching Ms O'Leary in the back and pushing her with both hands and she ended in the river and drowned. There were no witnesses to the incident and no CCTV footage, and the matter would have been treated as accident but for Holt's admission to gardaí.
Det Garda Callaghan said that Holt returned to the Simon Hostel on Anderson's Quay where, when staff asked him about Ms O'Leary, he said that she was in the river but staff unfortunately did not believe him as he was known for making up stories.
It was only about three hours later when he told staff at another Simon shelter that the alarm was raised and gardaí called in a team of Naval Service divers who found Ms O'Leary's body at 9.45am at Tivoli Docks en route to the scene of the incident.
A postmortem showed Ms O'Leary died from acute cardio respiratory failure due to drowning and a large bruise in the middle of her back corroborated Holt's account of punching, said Det Garda Callaghan, adding Holt had co-operated fully with gardaí.
Ms O'Leary's son, Denis, told how their mother's death had devastated his family and he asked why Holt hadn't raised the alarm immediately or why he had taken over two years to plead guilty to the charge, causing the family further distress.
Defence counsel, Tom Creed SC said that the delay in the plea was due to the fact that his client, who came from a broken home and had a long history of alcoholism and personality disorder, had to be psychiatrically assessed to see if he was fit to plead to the charge.
He said that his client fully accepted that he would receive a custodial sentence but he pointed out that gardaí accepted that there would never have been a prosecution in the case but for his admission of guilt and his co-operation with the police.
Judge Patrick Moran said he accepted that but he said it was a serious matter and he was concerned about a probation report that said that while Holt accepted responsibility for Ms O'Leary's death, he had expressed no remorse and had shown no empathy for this victim.
"His attitude towards the unfortunate victim could be described as cavalier," read Judge Moran from the report before sentencing Holt to six years in jail - a sentence which was greeted with cheering and applause from Ms O'Leary's family in the courtroom.