A man has been found guilty of the murder of a 61-year-old man who was found in a pool of blood at his home in Macroom, Co Cork having suffered 11 stab wounds and 19 slash wounds.<\/p>\n
Daniel Hourigan, aged 33, went on trial at a sitting of the Central Criminal Court in Cork city on 1 July charged with the murder of Michael Foley.<\/p>\n
A jury of six men and six women at the Central Criminal Court in Cork spent 10 hours and 18 minutes deliberating before reaching their unanimous guilty verdict this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Mr Foley lived in a Housing First property at Annville, Barrett’s Place in Macroom, Co Cork. He was found dead by care worker, Ciara Harmon, on 6 February 2024.<\/p>\n
Ms Harmon had become concerned as Mr Foley had failed to attend a medical appointment and was not answering calls.<\/p>\n
She raised the alarm when she found him dead in a pool of congealed blood in the kitchen\/living room area of his home.<\/p>\n
Hourigan, who is from Farranree in Cork city, gave evidence at the trial.<\/p>\n
He indicated that Mr Foley was a “relative through marriage” who had given him shelter when he was homeless in 2023. He stayed with him for six weeks that year.<\/p>\n
Hourigan said that he had gone to the home of Mr Foley in Macroom on 31 January 2024 with his then partner Linda O’Flynn. The couple stayed overnight.<\/p>\n
He told the jury that he woke during the night to the “sound of the place being broken up”.<\/p>\n
He said he got out of bed and went to the door of the kitchen where he saw his partner “freaking out”.<\/p>\n
He claimed he said “Linda, what are you after doing?” when he spotted Mr Foley on the floor in a pool of blood.<\/p>\n
Hourigan said that Ms O’Flynn refused to call the emergency services. He insisted that he had “no part or role in Michael’s murder.”<\/p>\n
Hourigan also told the jury that he had asked Mr Foley to be the Godfather of his unborn child; he claimed that at the time he thought Ms O’Flynn was pregnant.<\/p>\n
He told the jury that Ms O’Flynn murdered Mr Foley and that he had given garda\u00ed differing accounts of what occurred in to protect her.<\/p>\n
Ms O’Flynn was not a party to the trial.<\/p>\n
Jane Hyland, SC for the Prosecution, cross examined Hourigan. She put it to Hourigan that he had told garda\u00ed a number of different versions of what had occurred in the home of the deceased.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the cross-examination Hourigan insisted that he had given varying accounts as he was “protecting Linda from what she had done”.<\/p>\n
Ms Hyland asked Hourigan why he had not called an ambulance for a man “who was like an uncle” to him. He stated that Ms O’Flynn was in possession of the phone.<\/p>\n
Ms Hyland put it to Hourigan that the blows and wounds inflicted on Mr Foley were made by a person “with strength”. He again insisted that he “didn’t inflict them injuries”.<\/p>\n
In her closing speech to the jury, Ms Hyland said that Hourigan told garda\u00ed numerous lies in his garda interviews in order to protect himself, not Ms O’Flynn.<\/p>\n
She said that the deceased was a kind man who offered hospitality to people who were experiencing difficulty in life.<\/p>\n
Ms Hyland said that when Daniel Hourigan left Michael Foley’s home “he is carrying a black plastic bag containing the murder weapon with Michael Foley’s blood on it. We can see Mr Hourigan (on CCTV).”<\/p>\n
“He put that bag on the bus (to Cork city). When the bus stopped on Western Road (in Cork city), Mr Hourigan went to the back of the bus, he took other things out and left the black bag on the bus,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Hyland stated that Hourigan’s palmprint was found on the architrave of a door at Mr Foley’s house. She said that Hourigan had no explanation as to why his handprint was detected in the blood of Mr Foley on the architrave of the door.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Dr Margaret Bolster, assistant state pathologist, carried out a post-mortem examination on the deceased.<\/p>\n
She told the jury that one of the stab wounds pierced Mr Foley’s right lung, causing it to collapse whilst one of the slash wounds penetrated the skull leading to the loss of a lot of blood.<\/p>\n
Dr Bolster said that slash and stab wounds led to extensive haemorrhage and death.<\/p>\n
Mr Foley was a native of Scartagh in Clonakilty in west Cork.<\/p>\n
Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford excused the jury from further jury service for a period of five years.<\/p>\n
Hourigan was remanded in custody for sentencing on 30 July next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been found guilty of the murder of a 61-year-old man who was found in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-559293","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\/559293","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=559293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}