{"id":300712,"date":"2026-01-24T04:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T04:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/300712\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T04:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T04:47:10","slug":"limerick-jury-finds-woman-guilty-of-attempted-murder-of-daughter-8-at-accommodation-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/300712\/","title":{"rendered":"Limerick jury finds woman guilty of attempted murder of daughter (8) at accommodation centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Limerick jury has found a woman guilty of the attempted murder<\/a> of her eight year old daughter.<\/p>\n

The jury heard that four years ago at a location in County Clare, the girl sustained more than 70 stab wounds during the attack by her mother.<\/p>\n

The woman,\u00a0a Russian national, had also attempted to strangle her daughter.<\/p>\n

The woman had denied the charge before the Central Criminal Court, sitting in Limerick.<\/p>\n

This Friday afternoon the jury of seven men and five women told trial judge Kerida Naidoo that they were all agreed that the defendant was \u201cguilty\u201d of the girl\u2019s attempted murder.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong>\u00a0Jury in Limerick garda trial asked to consider why motorists involved were not prosecuted<\/a><\/p>\n

The woman\u00a0cannot be named to protect her daughter\u2019s legal right to anonymity as a minor.<\/p>\n

The trial heard the defendant had told gardai, following her arrest, that she was \u201cout of my mind\u201d at the time she attacked her daughter.<\/p>\n

The girl was kept alive by gardai from the Clare Division who broke into a locked bedroom at the accommodation centre where the mother attacked the girl.<\/p>\n

Paramedics at the scene continued to stem the blood flow at the bedroom and transferred the girl by ambulance to University Hospital Limerick and then onto Crumlin Children\u2019s Hospital, Dublin, where she received life-saving treatment and surgery at both hospitals.<\/p>\n

Senior counsel Lorcan Connolly led the prosecution case.<\/p>\n

The court was shown a DVD recording of the girl\u2019s interview with garda\u00ed, who months after the attack, in which she told them her mother had stood over her in her bed on the morning in question, and told her: \u201cI\u2019m going to kill you and then I\u2019m going to kill myself, because that is what\u2019s best.\u201d<\/p>\n

The girl explained that her mother used a \u201cbig kitchen knife\u201d to stab her.<\/p>\n

She recalled how her mother also \u201cdragged\u201d her into an en-suite bathroom and continued stabbing her in her stomach, chest, back and legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she was dragging me to the bathroom, I looked back and the bed was covered in blood,\u201d the girl told garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

The girl – who was not cross examined by the accused\u2019s defence barrister – said her mother told her that she had feared people were going to take her away from her and that it was \u201cbest\u201d if they both died.<\/p>\n

A witness called by the prosecution, UK consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Richard Church, gave evidence last week that, in his opinion, the defendant could not rely on a defence that she was insane at the time.<\/p>\n

Dr Church said that, while he believed the defendant was aware of what she was doing, he said he did not believe that the accused had not known that what she was doing was wrong at the time.<\/p>\n

Dr Church said he took \u201cgreat care\u201d in considering a defence of \u201cinsanity\u201d, but, he said he was \u201cnot satisfied\u201d that the accused could rely on it.<\/p>\n

From reading the book of evidence in the case, Dr Church said the defendant had allegedly concealed the knife used in the attack and had locked the door to the room where the alleged attack occurred \u2014 these were, Dr Church said, \u201cbehaviours indicating that she knew that what she was about to do was wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

The court heard the defendant had previously accessed psychiatric hospital services in her native Russia where she was diagnosed there with \u201cbipolar active disorder\u201d.<\/p>\n

In March 2022, six months prior to the attack on her daughter, the defendant and her daughter fled the war in Ukraine to Ireland and they stayed in a number of temporary accommodation premises.<\/p>\n

Dr Church said his view was, that at the time of the attack on the girl, the defendant was suffering with an \u201cadjustment disorder in addition to a personality disorder\u201d, which \u201cmanifested in a severe response to her circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said he believed the defendant was suffering from a number of stresses in her life at the time; that she had poor coping skills, and that she suffered emotional outbursts.<\/p>\n

Following her arrest, the defendant told gardai she stabbed her daughter multiple times with a kitchen knife and tried to strangle her.<\/p>\n

She said that she had been having suicidal thoughts at the time.<\/p>\n

The defendant said she had become paranoid that others thought she was a poor mother and that Tusla, the child and family agency, would come and take her daughter from her.<\/p>\n

She said she had contemplated various means of suicide and killing her daughter.<\/p>\n

During interviews with gardai the defendant confirmed that a knife garda\u00ed showed to her, which was seized from the scene, was the knife she said she used in the attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cChaos took over my mind,\u201d the defendant told Garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

Defence witness, Dr Paul O\u2019Connell, a consultant forensic psychiatrist Central Mental Hospital, told the court that, in his opinion, the defendant was in the throes of a mental disorder at the time and that, in his opinion, the accused was not aware at the time that what she was doing was wrong.<\/p>\n

The accused\u2019s barrister, senior counsel, Mark Nicholas, told the jury that if it accepted the evidence of Dr O\u2019Connell, they could consider that the accused was not guilty by reason of insanity.<\/p>\n

The jury disagreed and took just over eight hours to deliver its unanimous guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

She will be sentenced at the Criminal Courts of Justice, Dublin, on March 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Limerick jury has found a woman guilty of the attempted murder of her eight year old daughter.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[956,9,10,65264,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,8504,7586],"class_list":{"0":"post-300712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-central-criminal-court","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","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","25":"tag-tusla","26":"tag-university-hospital-limerick"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115948266948003480","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300712","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=300712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}