{"id":28889,"date":"2025-09-18T12:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/28889\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:27:07","slug":"six-family-members-to-stand-trial-after-church-brawl-in-donegal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/28889\/","title":{"rendered":"Six family members to stand trial after church brawl in Donegal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Six members of the same family are to stand trial following a brawl outside a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/donegal\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/donegal\/\">Co Donegal<\/a> church while Sunday Mass was being said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Five of the men appeared in person while another appeared by videolink before Judge Brendan O\u2019Reilly at a sitting of Falcarragh District Court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It follows an incident at the Church of the Irish Martyrs in Letterkenny on August 18th, 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Members of the congregation had to be kept inside the church after the incident in which slash hooks, an axe, a saw and knives were produced.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">A large squad of detectives, some armed, attended the grounds of the church at Ballyraine to deal with the disturbance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The incident was strongly condemned at the time by parish priest, Fr Ciaran Harkin, who later reassured parishioners that steps had been taken to ensure nothing similar would happen again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The men involved in the incident during 11am Mass were all later arrested.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">All six were charged with committing violent disorder, contrary to section 15 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The men\u2019s solicitor, Patsy Gallagher, told the judge that all had been served with books of evidence in the case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The six will now go forward for trial at the next sitting of Letterkenny Circuit Court commencing on October 28th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Michael Reilly Jr (31), of Kishogue Park, Lucan, Dublin, was charged with threatening and abusive behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, and also having a small axe and two sharp kitchen knives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Michael Reilly Sr (57), of Tailteann Drive, Windtown, Navan, Co Meath, was also charged with threatening and abusive behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace as well as possession of a slash-hook with intention to cause injury or intimidate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Thomas Reilly (22) and John Paul Reilly (30), both of Tailteann Drive, Windtown, Navan, Co Meath, were charged with threatening and abusive behaviour and that they had a foldable garden saw with intention to cause injury or intimidate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Brian Reilly, (28), is charged with producing a slash hook, intended to cause injury to, incapacitate or intimidate a person, to wit, production of an offensive weapon in a church car park in relation to an ongoing dispute with members of another family whom were present at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The latter charge was contrary to section 9 (5) of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, 1990.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">John Paul Reilly (30), was also charged with threatening and abusive behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace and that he had in his possession a foldable garden saw with intention to cause injury or intimidate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Gary Reilly (20), of Tailteann Drive, Windtown, Navan, was charged with violent disorder on the same date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">All apart from Brian Reilly were released on bail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The judge issued the alibi warning to all accused men and adjourned the cases until October 28th next.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Legal aid was granted to Mr Gallagher and one junior counsel was assigned to the six accused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six members of the same family are to stand trial following a brawl outside a Co Donegal church&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1485,61,60,1486,43],"class_list":["post-28889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-donegal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-letterkenny","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28889","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=28889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}