Tallaght<\/a>, admitted stabbing 20-year-old Jordan Ronan, causing his death, but claimed he was acting in defence of his family and his property. <\/p>\nIn her opening address, Patricia McLaughlin, prosecuting, told the jury of five women and seven men that Mr Ronan suffered a single fatal stab wound to the chest in the early hours of July 26th, 2024.<\/p>\n
Mr Ronan had spent the earlier part of the night chatting with his friends Rhys Murphy and John Green. Rhys Murphy told Ms McLaughlin the deceased called to his house at about 2am and they sat in a car in the garden, \u201cchilling and smoking weed\u201d until about 3.15am.<\/p>\n
The second friend, Mr Green, said he offered to let Mr Ronan stay at his house so they got out of the car and started walking. He said Mr Ronan kept going into gardens along the route and walking up to cars so Mr Green \u201croared at him\u201d and told him to follow. The witness arrived home and waited but Mr Ronan did not show up.<\/p>\n
At the same time, David Conlon was smoking at the window of his home on Drumcairn Avenue while his wife Madeline lay beside him in bed. He told Ms McLaughlin that he heard a \u201cloud roar\u201d, jumped up and saw \u201cthis lad running by the driveway\u201d and looking back behind him before he ran into a pole and fell to the ground.<\/p>\n
Firefighter Alexander Hudson, who arrived with the emergency services, said he noticed blood on Mr Ronan\u2019s chest and a wound measuring 1-2cm.<\/p>\n
Mr Hudson said he found two pairs of pliers and cards concealed on Mr Ronan\u2019s body. A Revolut card registered to Patrick Murphy was found on the deceased.<\/p>\n
Later that morning, Gda Cullen went to Mr Murphy\u2019s house to take a statement about the theft of his Revolut card. While taking the statement, Gda Cullen heard Murphy \u201cmutter under his breath\u201d, saying: \u201cThis is a load of boll***s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy did not mention that he had stabbed Mr Ronan.<\/p>\n
The jury viewed CCTV footage of the killing, which included footage from the Ring doorbell attached to Murphy\u2019s home. It showed Mr Ronan walking up Murphy\u2019s driveway and getting into his van before getting into Murphy\u2019s partner\u2019s BMW.<\/p>\n
The Ring doorbell footage showed Murphy opening his front door and sprinting down his driveway. The fatal encounter took place within seconds and Murphy ran back to his house, where he made several attempts before successfully removing the door camera.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed recovered the footage using Murphy\u2019s partner\u2019s phone. <\/p>\n
It was accepted that a Revolut card found in Jordan Ronan\u2019s possession belonged to Mr Murphy and had been taken from the defendant\u2019s van, which was parked in his driveway.<\/p>\n
In her closing speech, Ms McLaughlin said the force used by Murphy was \u201cdisproportionate to anything Jordan Ronan had done\u201d. <\/p>\n
She told the jury that Murphy armed himself with a knife, ran out of his house, opened the door of the car and deliberately stabbed Mr Ronan in the chest.<\/p>\n
Ronan Kennedy, defending, told the jury: \u201cWhatever you may think about Mr Murphy\u2019s actions, he is not a murderer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Murphy and his family were at home \u201cminding their own business\u201d when their \u201cpeace, their security\u201d was violated.<\/p>\n
He noted the youngest of the couple\u2019s four young children was just a few months old at the time and they were in the \u201csanctity of their own home\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A father-of-four has been found guilty of manslaughter for killing an \u201cintruder\u201d who had stolen from the defendant\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[36527,42,43,13356,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-197853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-courts-service","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-tallaght","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}