Woman, 30s, attacked by man with hurley in Limerick town is rushed to hospital<\/a><\/p>\nJudge Patricia Harney was told that prior to this incident, both parties had been involved in a heated verbal exchange outside Ms McCarthy\u2019s home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the injured party, a friend pulled up outside her home after she had dropped her children to school. Mr Blackwell, she said, then left his home and claimed that her friend\u2019s car was blocking his access. When he went to close the door of the vehicle, both women shouted and roared at him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Later in the day, at around 11:50am, Ms McCarthy said she was walking near the entrance of the estate when she was alerted to a verbal altercation involving Mr Blackwell\u2019s wife and another woman.<\/p>\n
She said Mr Blackwell, who was also present, then started verbally abusing her from his jeep at which point she took out her phone to begin recording.<\/p>\n
In her evidence, Ciara McCarthy said Mr Blackwell’s wife then went to attack both her and her friend and when she was asked to stop, she (Ms McCarthy) was grabbed by the throat and her phone was thrown \u201cfive feet into the air\u201d by Mr Blackwell.<\/p>\n
The complainant said she ran to retrieve her phone and that she then \u201clost the plot\u201d and went running to Mr Blackwell\u2019s jeep. She struck the window several times using her phone but no damage was done to the vehicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As this occurred, she said Mr Blackwell ran behind her and grabbed her. \u201cAll I remember was having my face stuck to the ground,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Garda Tom Moroney said it was the prosecution’s case that the defendant had thrown Ms McCarthy to ground and that his actions were disproportionate. He added that the relationship between the parties \u201cwould not be great\u201d.<\/p>\n
CCTV footage, which was played in court, captured the incident but not the events leading up to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garda Moroney said none of the independent witnesses were willing to make formal statements when he approached them following his arrival at the scene.<\/p>\n
After the altercation, Ms McCarthy presented herself at St John\u2019s Hospital in Limerick and was told to go to University Hospital Limerick but she did not. Photographs of the scratches she sustained were submitted to the court as evidence.<\/p>\n
Judge Patricia Harney was told that following the incident, Mr Blackwell met with gardai and gave a voluntary interview under caution at Rathkeale garda station.<\/p>\n
When shown an image of the damaged phone, he told garda\u00ed: \u201cShe must have damaged that herself\u201d insisting he did not remember doing it. Mr Blackwell told gardai he put her on the ground to restrain her from vandalising his jeep.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Being cross-examined by solicitor John Lynch, Ciara McCarthy denied that she was \u201cmanufacturing\u201d the assault.<\/p>\n
In her direct evidence, she claimed the incident lasted for around ten minutes but Mr Lynch put it to her that she was \u201ccompletely incorrect,\u201d based on the CCTV footage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not a prolonged incident,\u201d he said adding that the evidence indicates the incident lasted between 25 and 30 seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Replying, Ms McCarthy said: \u201cI accept what you\u2019re saying but I know what I\u2019m saying also.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was also asked if further damage was done to her mobile phone when she used it to strike the jeep and Mr Lynch suggested it was a \u201cbroken screen\u201d rather then the phone being \u201csmashed\u201d entirely.<\/p>\n
Following the conclusion of the evidence, Judge Harney dismissed the criminal damage charge saying there was no evidence confirming exactly how or when the phone was damaged.<\/p>\n
She said Mr Blackwell had \u201ca case to answer\u201d regarding the assault charge and proceeded to formally convict him when Mr Lynch confirmed his client would not be giving evidence.<\/p>\n
Inspector Gear\u00f3id Thompson told the court that Mr Blackwell has 28 previous convictions, 27 of which are for road traffic matters. The most recent conviction, for section 2 assault, dates back to October 15, 2024.<\/p>\n
On that occasion, Mr Blackwell received a two month prison sentence, which was fully suspended for 18 months.<\/p>\n
In his plea of mitigation, Mr Lynch said his client is married with a family and that he is is the sole breadwinner in the home. He reiterated his position that what occurred \u201cwas a reaction\u201d to his client\u2019s vehicle being attacked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Judge Harney said she had \u201cgrave concerns\u201d about Mr Blackwell\u2019s temper, considering it is the second time he has been convicted of assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The matter was put back to April 24 to facilitate the preparation of a probation report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AN ASKEATON man was convicted of assault arising from an altercation with a neighbour close to the entrance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2177,61,60,4588,66695,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-276179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-county-limerick","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-kilmallock","12":"tag-kilmallock-courthouse","13":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276179","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=276179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}