{"id":657162,"date":"2026-10-17T02:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T02:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/657162\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T02:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T02:44:08","slug":"man-who-delivered-final-strike-in-death-of-man-on-stag-jailed-for-six-and-a-half-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/657162\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who delivered \u2018final strike\u2019 in death of man on stag jailed for six-and-a-half years \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 40-year-old man who delivered \u201cthe final strike\u201d before the death of a man on a stag party in Athlone<\/a> in 2022 has been jailed for six-and-a-half years.<\/p>\n

Se\u00e1n Munnelly, of Irishtown, Athlone, Co Westmeath, received a sentence of seven years, with the final six months suspended, at Mullingar Circuit Court on Friday for the manslaughter of Paul \u2018Babs\u2019 Connolly (48), from Edenderry, Co Offaly.<\/p>\n

Connolly died in the early hours of August 13th, 2022, on Church Street after falling on three occasions during a number of physical altercations, involving punches and kicks, with two men: Munnelly, and David Higgins of St Paul\u2019s Terrace, Athlone.<\/p>\n

Higgins was previously jailed by Judge Keenan Johnson for one year for assault causing harm to Connolly and engaging in violent disorder.<\/p>\n

Sentencing at Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court on Friday, Judge Deirdre Browne said the final punch delivered by Munnelly was \u201cunprovoked and entirely unwarranted, very deliberate … and came out of nowhere\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said Munnelly was gesturing towards Connolly, who had earlier become separated from the stag party group, and was speaking in an \u201canimated fashion\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said Connolly was in \u201ca very vulnerable\u201d state as by that stage he had fallen twice and was clearly injured. At the sentence hearing earlier in October, video footage was shown where blood could be observed on Connolly\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Browne said a nurse who witnessed the final punch and who attended to Connolly after he fell for the final time, heard Munnelly say, \u201cF**king deserved it, no one pisses me off.\u201d <\/p>\n

Garda Kevin Craig also gave evidence at the sentence hearing that Connolly was refused entry to a number of establishments in Athlone earlier on due to his state of intoxication.<\/p>\n

Browne said on Friday that after seeing the extensive CCTV footage, she placed Munnelly\u2019s conduct at \u201ca very high level\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said that \u201cat all times\u201d during the assaults perpetrated by Higgins and Munnelly, Connolly appeared \u201cvulnerable\u201d and posed \u201cno threat\u201d to them.<\/p>\n

Munnelly claimed Connolly made remarks earlier that night in the presence of three other witnesses that he took exception to. Browne said any such remarks were of \u201cminor significance\u201d in the assessment of the offence of unlawful killing. <\/p>\n

Browne said that on the CCTV footage from this part of the night, Connolly \u201clurches, lumbers, is unsteady and appears out of it, not in an aggressive, threatening way, [but] as if he didn\u2019t know what was going on\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said that despite the interventions of younger men, an older bystander, and other members of the stag party, Higgins and Munnelly \u201cwould not go away\u201d.<\/p>\n

Browne did not accept that this was \u201ca one-punch case\u201d, but was one that involved \u201ca final strike\u201d after \u201ca series of assaults\u201d that took place over an \u201cextended period of time\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Consequently, she placed the offending in the four- to 10-year band of sentencing for unlawful killing. <\/p>\n

After setting a headline sentence of eight-and-a-half years, Browne turned to aggravating factors which included that Munnelly was 36 years old at the time, and so was \u201cnot a young man\u201d, and he was also on bail.<\/p>\n

Browne said that Munnelly had earlier drunk alcohol and taken cocaine and would have been aware of their \u201cdisinhibiting effects\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mitigating factors taken into account by Browne included Munnelly\u2019s guilty plea, even though it came \u201cvery late in the day\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, she noted that this was \u201ca complex case\u201d where the pathologist\u2019s report found the cause of death was a cardiac arrest following mild blunt force trauma to the head in the setting of emotional stress in circumstances of alcohol intoxication.<\/p>\n

Browne also noted the conclusion of a probation officer who said Munnelly had \u201ca long-standing dependence on alcohol\u201d, was sorry, and that he had made \u201csignificant\u201d efforts to rehabilitate in prison.<\/p>\n

Browne suspended the final six months of Munnelly\u2019s sentence for one year to allow him to continue this rehabilitation work and directed him to engage post-release with the Probation Service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 40-year-old man who delivered \u201cthe final strike\u201d before the death of a man on a stag party…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,8286,59],"class_list":["post-657162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-offaly","tag-westmeath"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657162","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=657162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}