{"id":71451,"date":"2025-09-18T12:27:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/71451\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:27:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:27:06","slug":"six-family-members-to-stand-trial-after-church-brawl-in-donegal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/71451\/","title":{"rendered":"Six family members to stand trial after church brawl in Donegal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six members of the same family are to stand trial following a brawl outside a Co Donegal<\/a> church while Sunday Mass was being said.<\/p>\n

Five of the men appeared in person while another appeared by videolink before Judge Brendan O\u2019Reilly at a sitting of Falcarragh District Court.<\/p>\n

It follows an incident at the Church of the Irish Martyrs in Letterkenny on August 18th, 2024.<\/p>\n

Members of the congregation had to be kept inside the church after the incident in which slash hooks, an axe, a saw and knives were produced.<\/p>\n

A large squad of detectives, some armed, attended the grounds of the church at Ballyraine to deal with the disturbance.<\/p>\n

The incident was strongly condemned at the time by parish priest, Fr Ciaran Harkin, who later reassured parishioners that steps had been taken to ensure nothing similar would happen again.<\/p>\n

The men involved in the incident during 11am Mass were all later arrested.<\/p>\n

All six were charged with committing violent disorder, contrary to section 15 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s solicitor, Patsy Gallagher, told the judge that all had been served with books of evidence in the case.<\/p>\n

The six will now go forward for trial at the next sitting of Letterkenny Circuit Court commencing on October 28th.<\/p>\n

Michael Reilly Jr (31), of Kishogue Park, Lucan, Dublin, was charged with threatening and abusive behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, and also having a small axe and two sharp kitchen knives.<\/p>\n

Michael Reilly Sr (57), of Tailteann Drive, Windtown, Navan, Co Meath, was also charged with threatening and abusive behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace as well as possession of a slash-hook with intention to cause injury or intimidate.<\/p>\n

Thomas Reilly (22) and John Paul Reilly (30), both of Tailteann Drive, Windtown, Navan, Co Meath, were charged with threatening and abusive behaviour and that they had a foldable garden saw with intention to cause injury or intimidate.<\/p>\n

Brian Reilly, (28), is charged with producing a slash hook, intended to cause injury to, incapacitate or intimidate a person, to wit, production of an offensive weapon in a church car park in relation to an ongoing dispute with members of another family whom were present at the time.<\/p>\n

The latter charge was contrary to section 9 (5) of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, 1990.<\/p>\n

John Paul Reilly (30), was also charged with threatening and abusive behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace and that he had in his possession a foldable garden saw with intention to cause injury or intimidate.<\/p>\n

Gary Reilly (20), of Tailteann Drive, Windtown, Navan, was charged with violent disorder on the same date.<\/p>\n

All apart from Brian Reilly were released on bail.<\/p>\n

The judge issued the alibi warning to all accused men and adjourned the cases until October 28th next.<\/p>\n

Legal aid was granted to Mr Gallagher and one junior counsel was assigned to the six accused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six members of the same family are to stand trial following a brawl outside a Co Donegal church…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,6368,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,11165,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-71451","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-donegal","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-letterkenny","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\/71451","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=71451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}