Builder took his life after killing former girlfriend

A construction worker shot his ex-girlfriend three times while she sat in her car in her pyjamas before he turned the gun on himself an inquest heard yesterday.

Robert Hartrey (45) from Mill Park, Grangemockler, Co Tipperary, went to Roscommon a few days before Valentine’s Day two years ago on the pretext of retrieving clothes and other items from his former girlfriend Sarah Regan.

Roscommon coroner Desmond P O’Connor said it was very sad and traumatic for both families. “What occurred was no answer,” he said. “The reality is that they were young people with the greater part of their lives ahead of them.”

In Ms Regan’s case the jury returned a verdict of unlawful death and a suicide verdict in Hartrey’s case. Sympathies were extended to both families by the jury.

Agreed to meet
The inquest was told Ms Regan, of West View, Cloonfad, Co Roscommon, had agreed to meet Hartrey at a nearby ghost estate on February 10th. Her mother, Ann McDermott, said she had last seen her daughter that evening when Ms Regan cooked dinner and took it to her father.

The 30-year-old later drove in her father’s car to Spring Vale estate to meet her former boyfriend. But Hartrey produced a shotgun and shot her while she sat in the car with the engine running.

State pathologist prof Marie Cassidy said Ms Regan was shot twice in the head and once in the neck. She believed that the shot to the right side of the head killed the woman instantly, the second shot grazed her and the shot to the neck would also have been fatal.

The inquest in Ballaghaderreen heard that Hartrey then drove a short distance to the car park of the national school in Cloonfad and shot himself.

He had got a lift from Tipperary to Cloonfad from family friend Brigid Egan, who had cared for Hartrey’s mother and knew all the family. She said Hartrey had asked her for a lift to Roscommon to retrieve items from his former girlfriend.

The couple had moved from Tipperary to Cloonfad about seven months prior to their deaths, but Hartrey had returned home to Grangemockler about 11 weeks earlier after the relationship ended.