Two brothers have been found not guilty of trying to murder another pair of brothers during an attack at an unofficial halting site in Co Offaly last year, during which there was \u201cpandemonium\u201d, with shots fired and children forced to search for cover.<\/p>\n
The jury at the Central Criminal Court rejected the evidence of victim Anthony McDonagh, who described \u201clocking eyes\u201d with the accused, Patrick \u201cPa\u201d Ward (38), before the latter allegedly shot him in the chest outside his home.<\/p>\n
They also rejected the evidence of father-of-eight Michael McDonagh, who told the trial he was \u201c100 per cent\u201d that the second accused, John Pio Ward (42), shot him in the chest.<\/p>\n
Defence witness Eileen McDonagh said she was \u201cdevastated\u201d when she found out her two brothers \u2013 Anthony and Michael \u2013 had been shot, but she told the Central Criminal Court that her partner Patrick \u201cPa\u201d Ward \u201cdidn\u2019t do it\u201d.<\/p>\n
The panel of seven men and five women deliberated for four hours and 20 minutes before delivering their majority verdicts on Thursday in the trial of the Ward brothers. <\/p>\n
The jury was initially told they had to be unanimous in their verdicts, but after deliberating for just over four hours, Judge Paul McDermott told them he would accept a majority verdict.<\/p>\n
Patrick Ward, of Kilcruttin, Tullamore, Co Offaly, was charged with attempting to murder father-of-five Anthony McDonagh (40) at the unofficial halting site on March 21st, 2025. John Pio Ward, also of Kilcruttin, was charged with the attempted murder of Michael McDonagh (46) at the same location on the same date. <\/p>\n
Both accused men faced further charges of possession of firearms and violent disorder at Kilcruttin halting site on the same date.<\/p>\n
The two defendants, who had denied all of the charges, were found not guilty on all counts.<\/p>\n
It had been the State\u2019s case that a group of men were involved in a violent altercation at 9.50pm on March 21st outside Tullamore Hospital \u2013 three members of the Ward family, who are first cousins of the two defendants, as well as the victim Michael McDonagh. <\/p>\n
The trial heard that minutes after Michael McDonagh arrived home to the unofficial site that night, a large group appeared, \u201chaving come from the official halting site\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome members of the group were in possession of firearms, and shots were discharged,\u201d prosecution counsel Kevin White told the jury. He said \u201cpandemonium\u201d ensued, and people including children were forced to look for cover.<\/p>\n
The jury heard Anthony and Michael McDonagh were attacked at the unofficial site some time before 10.12pm that night, when a 999 call was made to emergency services. <\/p>\n
The court heard the victims were shot in the chest, neck and face, with pellets from a shotgun have embedded in their bodies next to vital organs. Both men were \u201cvery lucky\u201d not to experience serious complications or even death, the trial heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two brothers have been found not guilty of trying to murder another pair of brothers during an attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-472180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472180","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=472180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}