A mother whose husband and little girl were killed in a house fire cried “this is a joke” in court on Thursday after the double killer was jailed for six and a half years.
Philip Griffin (37), of no fixed abode but originally from Tralee in Co Kerry, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Anthony O’Brien (30) and Nadine O’Brien (5) at Killeen Heights in Tralee on May 12, 2012.
At Griffin’s sentencing hearing earlier this week, the court heard that after he had seen to his wife Kelly’s escape, Anthony O’Brien and his five-year-old daughter Nadine were found wrapped in one another’s arms by fire crews who had battled their way into the smoke-filled house.
Kelly O’Brien, Anthony’s wife and Nadine’s mother, told the court that she spent years insisting the fire had been started deliberately but gardaí had insisted it was an accident.
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In May 2022, ten years after the fire, Griffin contacted gardaí while in prison for a separate offence to say he wanted to make a voluntary statement. He told detectives that he and another named individual had climbed through a downstairs window of the O’Brien home in the early hours of the morning. He said the other man used a cigarette lighter to set fire to a couch in the sittingroom before both men made their escape through a window.
The smoke from the fire caused the deaths of Anthony and Nadine while Kelly O’Brien managed to escape when Anthony lowered her to the ground from an upstairs bedroom window. She fractured her heel in the fall.
The court heard that the previous day, there had been an altercation between Griffin, Mr O’Brien, and others regarding payment for a €50 bag of heroin. Griffin’s barrister Brendan Grehan SC said his client went to gardaí because he “couldn’t live with the guilt of what happened”.
Mr Grehan said his client wants to apologise to the O’Brien family and wants to be “locked up” for what he did.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott at the Central Criminal Court told the victims’ familythat the law is a “blunt instrument” that does not remove the suffering they continue to endure.
The judge noted that Philip Griffin (37), a criminal with 41 previous convictions, did not start the fire that caused the deaths, but saw it being lit and left without doing anything to raise the alarm even though he knew there could be people in the house.
Noting that Griffin pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis of gross negligence, the judge imposed a headline sentence of eleven years. However, he further noted that the crime would not have come to light had Griffin not come forward ten years later, in May 2022, to admit his part. Until then it had been treated as an “accidental fire” following a finding by the coroner’s court.
Considering all mitigating factors, including Griffin’s expressions of remorse, the judge reduced the sentence to one of seven years with the final six months suspended.
Speaking outside the court, Kelly O’Brien said: “I’m in shock, disgusted. It’s not as if my child passed in her sleep. My child woke up and had to fight.”
She said Griffin will serve no more than four years and seven months.
She said she fought for justice alone for 12 years while her child’s killer gets to continue his life. She added: “He’s a coward and I hope to God that karma comes around and he gets the same death as he gave my husband and child because by god they suffered and four years and seven months is a joke.”
In her statement to the court, Kelly O’Brien said she spent years insisting that the fire had been started deliberately but gardaí insisted it was an accident.
She told Griffin, who appeared via video-link from prison because he did not want to be present in court, that he had killed an innocent child and a good father, who had never wronged him but only ever helped him out.
“You took away a child so full of life, so young, so caring, so funny, who loved animals and music and who had the most beautiful eyes and curly hair. She loved her dad so much and he loved her. The only closure I have is that she died with the first person she saw coming into this world and sadly, he was the last.”
Ms O’Brien also spoke of the horrifying moment when she awoke to the smell of smoke. She woke her husband who opened the bedroom door, and was immediately “beaten back by thick black smoke”.
Mr O’Brien managed to open a window and lowered his wife to the ground, but he was unable to get himself or their daughter to safety.
Ms O’Brien, having fractured her heel in the fall, said she knew something was wrong when she looked up but couldn’t see her husband or Nadine.
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