A 53-year-old homeless woman who killed her partner during a drunken row on a Cork city street has been given a six-year suspended sentence after a judge was told that she could just as easily have ended up the victim in the row.
Mary O'Driscoll, a native of east Cork but with an address at Mill House, Anderson's Quay, Cork, pleaded guilty in February 2004 to the manslaughter of her partner, Mr Walter Black (47), at Academy Street on June 25th, 2002.
Sgt Sean Leahy told an earlier sitting of Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the pair left the Simon Community shelter in Cork where they were staying, and bought three bottles of wine and went drinking together before a row broke out.
"She caught him by the shoulders and hit him against a blue door of the Irish Examiner office. She pulled him from behind and swung him around. He fell, hitting his head against a concrete bin and she stamped on Walter Black's head four or five times with her bare foot."
Doctors battled to save him but he had suffered a severe brain injury and died in hospital on July 1st, 2002, Sgt Leahy told the earlier hearing.
Yesterday, O'Driscoll's counsel, Mr Ciaran O'Loughlin SC, said his client had availed of the year's remand on bail to improve her life, and reports on her from both the Simon Community and the Health Services Executive were very positive. Mr O'Loughlin said the probation officer, Ms Therese Moriarty, had said she believed that no useful purpose would be served by jailing O'Driscoll.
Judge Moran said that manslaughter usually involved a custodial sentence, but he accepted Ms Moriarty's contention that Mr Black had an influence over O'Driscoll and it was only following his death that she managed to make the decision to change her life.
"While the attack upon Walter Black was appalling, it was a culmination of a volatile, destructive alcoholic relationship, the reciprocal violence of the couple over the years could just as easily have ended with Ms O'Driscoll as a victim," read Judge Moran from the probation report. He sentenced O'Driscoll to six years in jail, suspended on condition she keep the peace for three years.