A 19-year-old Dublin man was yesterday sentenced to six years in prison for the manslaughter of his uncle on December 20th, 2003.
Mark Bissett, from Loughlinstown, had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 54-year-old David Sutherland in a cul-de-sac in Sallynoggin, also in the south of the city.
The Central Criminal Court heard that David Sutherland, from Ballybrack, Dublin, was beaten and kicked to death in a drunken row, following an accusation by Bissett that Mr Sutherland had killed his aunt.
Mr Sutherland's body was found the following morning in a laneway at Pearse Gardens. A postmortem showed he died of inhalation of blood and blunt force trauma to the head.
Mr Sutherland, whose wife Patricia was also murdered over a decade earlier, was homeless and living in hostels around the city. He was known to gardaí for minor criminal activity.
The court heard that Bissett, a father-of-one, was arrested in his home on December 21st, 2003, when gardaí found him hiding in his attic.
In his statements, the then 18-year-old said he had been drinking from 6.30pm on the Saturday evening. By the time he bumped into Mr Sutherland in Pearse Gardens, Bissett had drunk eight cans of lager. He did not recognise his aunt's widower.
The deceased, who had a long-term alcohol problem, had also been drinking, "He was falling all over the place. I was holding him up. He offered me some Baileys. I took too much and he was going mad," Bissett told detectives investigating the killing.
An argument broke out between the two men and, as the accused was helping the older man get his bags over a six-foot wall, a fight erupted.
"I asked him his name. He said 'David Sutherland' and I said, 'You're the one who killed my auntie'. He just flipped. grabbed me by the neck and said, 'I never f***ing killed her'," Bissett said.
Mr Sutherland had a hold of Bissett, who punched him in the nose. When his uncle fell to the ground, "he whacked his head and I kicked him twice in the head. He probably wouldn't have fallen if he wasn't so drunk," the accused said.
However, Bissett insisted it was never his intention to kill Mr Sutherland and that it all happened very quickly. "I was only with him for 10 or 15 minutes," he said.
Bissett left his uncle lying there and went to a cousin's house, where he washed the blood off his hands.
He told his cousin he had knocked Mr Sutherland out and that he had not moved. Bissett then went home and burned the bloodstained clothes he was wearing.
Det Sgt James Martin told the court that Bissett had 16 previous convictions and was currently serving a sentence for three robberies, assault causing harm and assault of a police officer.
Defence counsel Isobel Kennedy SC told the court that her client had been in custody at St Patrick's Institution since the killing, before which he was homeless and living in hostels, sometimes sleeping rough.
The court heard that the accused came from a dysfunctional family with limited parental support, he had left school around the age of 14 and been thrown out of his home when he was 17.
In sentencing Bissett, Mr Justice Paul Carney said the serious thing from the accused's point of view was the kicking in the head, something which, he said, is likely to result, if not in death, in serious and permanent brain damage. This was something that "cannot be countenanced or tolerated", he added.