A JURY has returned an unanimous guilty verdict at the trial of a man charged with the murder of a teenager who was stabbed to death in Limerick two years ago.
Mr Justice Paul Carney imposed a mandatory life sentence.
John O’Loughlin (21), Cecil Street, Limerick, had denied murdering Roman Vysochan (16), a Ukrainian, at Carraig Midhe, Corbally, on May 10th, 2008, but admitted assaulting the victim’s friend, who was 15 at the time.
Roman and his friend were visiting their girlfriends at a house in the Corbally estate when O’Loughlin and another man entered an upstairs bedroom and stabbed the two teenage boys with a kitchen knife.
The boys ran from the house but Roman collapsed at the entrance to the estate and died a short time later from a stab wound to the chest.
During the trial, the court heard that blood from the murder victim and his teenage friend was found on a knife recovered from the back garden of a neighbouring house in Carraig Midhe.
Forensic scientist Diane Daly from the forensic laboratory at the Department of Justice told the court that the chances of the DNA from the blood on the knife being from a person unrelated to Roman Vysochan was one in a thousand million.
She said a mixed partial DNA profile was found on the knife which meant that the DNA was from more than one source. The DNA contained profiles from Roman and the 15-year-old boy, whom O’Loughlin admitted stabbing in the leg.
She said it was 200,000 times more likely to be the DNA of Roman and the other teenager than of him and another unknown person.
In her closing speech, Mary Rose Gearty, SC, for the prosecution, told the jury that the DNA evidence found on the knife was consistent with the prosecution case.
“Clearly the same knife was used to stab both,” Ms Gearty said. “That is the only reasonable conclusion that one can come to on that evidence.”
The jury returned the guilty verdict yesterday afternoon after deliberating for two hours at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Limerick.
Tetyana Vysochan, the victim’s mother, wept as Garda John Flanagan read a victim impact statement on her behalf. She said no words could describe her family’s loss. “Our world has fallen. We have lost our beautiful son.”
Ms Vysochan said Roman’s eight-year-old brother, Oleg, always asked after his brother and missed playing with him.
“How can we answer his questions? How can I explain to him that Roman is dead and we will not see him again?”
The jury heard evidence of a statement given by the accused man’s sister Gillian O’Loughlin (20), in which she told gardaí that she saw her brother stab the victim four or five times.
When called to give evidence in court, however, Ms O’Loughlin said she could not recall events clearly as she had been smoking hash on the night in question
Another witness who was in the house told the court that she could not remember the contents of her statement to gardaí as she had been taking cocaine and smoking hash.