A \u201cjealous\u201d man tried to murder his ex-girlfriend by stabbing her more than 50 times in a \u201cferocious, unwarranted\u201d attack on the street, the Central Criminal Court has heard. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnly for an off-duty paramedic, I would have been left to die,\u201d Niamh Kelly (21) told the court on Thursday during a hearing for the sentencing of Josh O\u2019Brien. <\/p>\n
The court heard the attack lasted up to six minutes, and a piece of the knife 22-year-old O\u2019Brien used was still lodged in Ms Kelly\u2019s skull. <\/p>\n
She spent seven months in hospital recovering from her injuries. The attack left her with lifelong injuries.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien, of Walkinstown Avenue, Crumlin, Dublin 12, admitted the attempted murder of Ms Kelly on September 19th last year. <\/p>\n
Det Gda John Dalton told the court O\u2019Brien and Ms Kelly were in a relationship for more than a year and have a baby together. <\/p>\n
The relationship \u201cgot rocky\u201d in summer 2023, he said, with O\u2019Brien once calling Ms Kelly names on Snapchat, saying she would be \u201ca terrible mother\u201d. Another time he threatened to kill her. <\/p>\n
Det Gda Dalton said O\u2019Brien and Ms Kelly were walking on September 19th last year when O\u2019Brien told her he wanted to get back together. <\/p>\n
Det Gda Dalton said O\u2019Brien punched Ms Kelly in the face, kicked her, pushed her to the ground and stabbed her with a knife. <\/p>\n
Ms Kelly described it as \u201ca flicky blade\u201d and said she was shouting at him to stop while he was stabbing her. O\u2019Brien stabbed her in the torso and back. O\u2019Brien stood on Ms Kelly\u2019s head. <\/p>\n
The attack, which happened on Firhouse Road, Firhouse, Dublin 24, continued for five to six minutes before nearby security personnel intervened and O\u2019Brien ran away. <\/p>\n
Det Dalton said O\u2019Brien told garda\u00ed he felt betrayed because Ms Kelly was turning her back on him. He told garda\u00ed he was hearing voices saying: \u201cDon\u2019t take that disrespect.\u201d He said he had four drinks on the day of the attack. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was just listening to the voices … I didn\u2019t want to kill her. If I really wanted to kill her, I would have continued,\u201d O\u2019Brien told garda\u00ed. <\/p>\n
Det Gda Dalton said O\u2019Brien was found with a shaving razor when arrested and told garda\u00ed he had \u201cgoogled shaving her head\u201d. Det Gda Dalton said this referred to an incident reported in the media about someone who shaved a woman\u2019s head \u201cso the girl wouldn\u2019t be attractive to other people\u201d. <\/p>\n
The court heard O\u2019Brien had no previous convictions. <\/p>\n
A medical report on Ms Kelly read out by Vincent Heneghan SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said she suffered stab wounds all over her body, multiple broken bones in her skull, bleeding on the surface of her brain and a stab wound to one eye that resulted in permanent sight loss.<\/p>\n
She had multiple broken bones in her face, a broken bone in her neck, a lung injury that required draining, a wound to her liver and a cut through part of her spinal cord that caused paralysis in her left leg. <\/p>\n
She also experienced damage to her hands and required intensive therapy to regain normal movement. <\/p>\n
Ms Kelly would have died without medical care, the report stated. While she could take short walks, she required the use of a wheelchair for long distances. <\/p>\n
In a victim impact statement, Ms Kelly said her life \u201cchanged forever both physically and mentally\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was defenceless … Only for an off-duty paramedic, I would have been left to die,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I woke up in hospital after the incident and was told about all my injuries, I didn\u2019t want to believe it. All the things I wanted to do with my life are gone. I cried and cried, believing my life was over. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs a 21-year-old, I feel that my future has been destroyed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Michael O\u2019Higgins SC, defending, said O\u2019Brien wished to apologise to the victim for having \u201cdone something terrible\u201d. Mr O\u2019Higgins described this as a \u201cferocious, unwarranted, unjustified and unprovoked attack\u201d driven by \u201coverwhelming jealousy\u201d. <\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Higgins said O\u2019Brien was consumed with remorse and accepted full responsibility for the attack. <\/p>\n
Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring put the matter back to October 20th for finalisation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u201cjealous\u201d man tried to murder his ex-girlfriend by stabbing her more than 50 times in a \u201cferocious,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,69791,18,13,14,69792,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-112741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-crumlin","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-firhouse","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}