A HOMELESS man has been jailed for six years after he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his partner. She drowned when he pushed her into the river Lee following a row during a drinking session.
Greg Holt (37), with an address care of the Simon Community in Cork but originally from Drogheda, Co Louth, had pleaded guilty last year to the unlawful 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 that they spent the day drinking a substantial quantity of alcohol at Albert Quay. 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 up in the river and drowned. There were no witnesses to the incident and no CCTV footage and the matter would have been treated as an 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. Gardaí called in a team of Naval Service divers who found Ms O’Leary’s body at 9.45am at Tivoli Docks.
A postmortem showed Ms O’Leary died from acute cardio- respiratory failure due to drowning. A large bruise in the middle of her back corroborated Holt’s account of punching her, said Det Garda Callaghan, adding that Holt had co-operated fully with gardaí.
Ms O’Leary’s son, Denis, told how their mother’s death had devastated his family. He asked why Holt hadn’t raised the alarm immediately or why he had taken more than two years to plead guilty to the charge, causing the family further distress.
Tom Creed SC, defending, said that the delay in the plea was due to the fact that his client had to be psychiatrically assessed to see if he was fit to plead to the charge.
He said 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 Garda.
Judge Patrick Moran said he accepted that but it was a serious matter.
He was concerned about a probation report which 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.