The family of a young mother who died in a hit-and-run incident say they are horrified by the sentence handed down to the man responsible for her death.
Marguerita O’Rourke (nee Sheridan) arrived home to Rathkeale, Co Limerick, from the UK with her husband and newborn baby to spend Christmas 2024 with her family. The 21-year-old had been married for just one year and had given birth to her only child, Edward, three weeks beforehand.
She was killed on December 21, only a day after arriving home.
Moments before her death, her uncle, Danny O’Donoghue, rammed his van into the front steel gates of a house in Rathkeale while Marguerita was about to open them for her mother. The gate impacted Marguerita and she fell backwards, causing blunt force trauma to her head and abdominal injuries.
That day is etched into the minds of her loved ones who watched her fight for her life on the ground near her home as the emergency services tried to revive her.
She was pronounced dead at University Hospital Limerick due to “injuries incompatible with life”.
Her horrific death made international headlines. Fr Liam Enright, who had known Marguerita since she was a child, calls it an “Unspeakable tragedy.”
On January 21 this year, O’Donoghue was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for dangerous driving causing the “violent and senseless loss of life” of his niece.
Under the Road Traffic Act, dangerous driving causing death carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.
Judge Colin Daly suspended the final six months to facilitate his rehabilitation and backdated the sentence to when O’Donoghue was first taken into custody. He was also disqualified from driving for seven years.
John Sheridan with his daughter Marguerita on her wedding day.
In the family’s first interview, her heartbroken father John Sheridan told the Irish Examiner he is haunted by traumatic memories of his daughter as she lay on the ground.
“Her mother was screaming,” he said. “Her tiny body was kicking and kicking but I knew she was gone.
“You wouldn’t do to a dog what was done to Marguerita. How could there only be five years given for that? There is something very wrong with our courts system.”
Marguerita’s husband Denis O’Rourke said: “My wife left my home and gave me the child to walk out and open the gate for her mother.
“This man deliberately drove at the gate. It didn’t matter who was behind the gate – man, woman or child – the outcome would have been the same. My wife was the unlucky one behind the gate.
“He didn’t mean to hit my wife, but he then drove on and was found with a machete in his car.
“The outcome was never going to end well when he was driving around like that with a machete in the car.
“There is no justice in the case at all when all he got was five years for that, with one suspended. A drink driver would have gotten more.”
Mr Sheridan described how the family home in Rathkeale, where he has lived for 26 years with his wife Margaret and their four children, was “full of love but is now a house hollowed out by grief”.
“The life has gone out of me and out of this house,” said Mr Sheridan. “I am in bed most days now. I’m on medication for depression. My wife Margaret is not well either, she cries in her sleep or sits up at the grave crying, sometimes at 2am.
“Life will never be the same after losing our precious girl. My wife’s brother is responsible, and she won’t ever speak to him again.”
He said his family struggles daily with memories of seeing their beloved Marguerita slowly pass away.
“She suffered, no doubt about it, we all saw it” he said. “She had only got here with my son-in-law and my grandson around 12:30 midday and she died around 12 the next day.
“I don’t believe there is any remorse at all. I have never been in trouble in my whole life, and our beautiful girl never harmed a soul. She was the best person you could ever meet.
“She ran my business but now I have given it all up, I just don’t care anymore. We are all suffering, we can’t accept she is not here anymore.”
Mr Sheridan said Marguerita’s siblings are heartbroken and trying to come to terms with her sudden loss.
“There is Eileen, her older sister, who is 24, Paddy who is 18, and Freddy is 15. We are a very close family and the boys are suffering, especially my youngest son. It was always just us as a family and then she married my son-in-law and gave us a gorgeous grandson.”
Marguerita O’Rourke’s baby boy Edward.
Marguerita and her teenage sweetheart, Denis O’Rourke, tied the knot on December 5, 2023. The couple moved to the UK and their son Edward was born in November 2024.
Older sister Eileen lives next to her parents’ house with her husband and two daughters, aged 2 and 4.
Eileen told the Irish Examiner that she has “no words” to fully describe the pain her family is enduring and how much they miss her sister.
“One minute she was so excited for her first Christmas here with her baby and then she was gone. The shock of that is so hard.
“Only for baby Edward I don’t know what we would do, he is a blessing to this family and we adore him.
“Marguerita couldn’t wait to have him; she was buying him so many lovely things when she was pregnant, she was the perfect daughter, sister, wife, and mother.”
Marguerita, left, and her sister Eileen.
Despite living abroad, Denis O’Rourke remains close to his wife’s family.
He said: “I am very angry over what happened to my wife. She was only 21 years old. We have a beautiful baby now who needs his mother.
“I can’t accept it; we are all so devastated.”
The court heard that O’Donoghue had six previous convictions including dangerous driving, careless driving, disorderly conduct, failing to comply with a garda’s directions, and causing minor bodily harm in Germany, in March 2023, for which he received a €330 fine.
He pleaded guilty to his niece’s death and during sentencing, Judge Daly was told while he had no issue with his niece Marguerita, there had been tensions around the time between the O’Rourke, Sheridan, and O’Donoghue families.
The court was told that after knocking Marguerita to the ground, O’Donoghue drove away and attacked a van belonging to Patrick Sheridan, and was recorded on CCTV smashing the vehicle’s windows.
Mr Sheridan told gardaí he felt as if his life “flashed” before him as O’Donoghue approached him with a “3ft machete”. Mr O’Donoghue went on the run for two days before handing himself into gardaí and pleading guilty.
“It is absolutely disgusting the whole thing,” said Mr O’Rourke.
“How did he get five years for all of that? My beautiful wife is gone, then he goes off and attacks someone else with a machete, then he goes on the run.
“Can somebody please tell me how that ends up as four years in jail? There is no justice.”
Growing up, John Sheridan said his daughter was adored in the community and was well known for being there for anyone who needed support.
She attended the local St. Anne’s school with her sister Eileen before moving to secondary school where Marguerita sat her junior cert and excelled in all subjects.
“I never knew of anyone who was as clever as her,” said Eileen. “She was so organised and full of energy and was always laughing and keeping people’s spirits up.
“She always looked gorgeous and loved her clothes and makeup, and she was devoted to her family, especially our mother, they were best friends you wouldn’t see one without the other, and she idolised my dad.
“I can’t say enough nice things about her, from running the home, to being a businesswoman there was nothing she couldn’t do she had the whole world at her feet and her whole life ahead of her and she wanted to live.”
Eileen said the only joy they have in their lives now is baby Edward. They have created a memory box for him with treasures belonging to his mother.
“He is only 14 months we would be lost without him,” said Eileen.
Nothing is the same now and her not being here, it doesn’t seem real. We are all walking around with this big hole in our hearts. She was never off the phone to us, or in and out to us when she was here.
That closeness was reflected when Margaret and Freddy Sheridan travelled by car and ferry to be by Marguerita’s side when she gave birth to Edward.
“Our mother and Freddy packed up and drove to Dublin, got the ferry, and went to Mansfield to be at the hospital. She insisted on having them there when the baby came and it was a very special time,” said Eileen.
No one could have foreseen that Christmas 2024, which was meant to be spent with her family, husband, and newborn, was to be Marguerita’s last.
“We have no Christmas to look forward to anymore,” said Eileen. “Everything is ruined now.
“Every event was special to her, she loved St Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day will be very hard for us too, she would have loved to be here for that.”
The family marked Marguerita’s first anniversary of her death at Christmas by unveiling a large life-sized image of her imprinted onto her grave which is surrounded by tall white marble.
“We are very religious people, and we visit the grave every day,” said Eileen. “It is lovely to see her beautiful face when you go there. Our mother designed it and we all had a say. We wanted to give her what she deserved — a beautiful resting place.”