A US court has handed a 24-year prison sentence to a man for the manslaughter last year of Longford woman Sarah McNally in an Irish pub in New York city.
Marcin Pieciak, a 38-year-old man from Glendale, Queens, had initially been charged with murder, but a subsequent plea deal between legal teams on opposing sides resulted in a manslaughter verdict.
Sarah McNally, a 41-year-old woman originally from Co Longford, had been living in New York for about 10 years at the time of her death.
She had been working a bartending shift at The Ceili House, a since-closed Irish bar in the Queens neighbourhood, Maspeth, on March 30th, 2024, when Pieciak arrived armed with two knives and attacked her.
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She was subsequently stabbed 19 times, suffering extensive injuries, including a severed spinal cord and damage to her carotid artery. She died shortly after being admitted to nearby Elmhurst Hospital.
Pieciak, after the attack, proceeded to injure himself with a knife after being tackled by a patron at the bar, who prevented his escape. He later disarmed and arrested by police officers at the scene.
Appearing before Justice Ushir Pandit-Durant in New York on Friday morning, Pieciak reaffirmed his guilt and accepted his sentence, claiming to the court that he had no explanation for the crime he had committed.
In remarks directed at Ms McNally’s extended family in Ireland, he said: “Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers. I’ve been thinking about her every day and night, about Sarah. I have no answers.
“I know it’s too early now, but I hope one day you will forgive me,” he added.
Assistant District Attorney Gabriel Reale, acting on behalf of the McNally family, read out a victim impact statement, detailing Sarah’s particularly close relationship with her mother Dorrie and her love of animals and music.
He also spoke about how her parents Dorrie and Des had lost their only child, and relatives their eldest cousin and niece.
“Losing Sarah in the circumstances we did, has been the most painful, gut-wrenching thing we have ever experienced, and not something we will ever get over,” the family said in the statement.
