Jury sent home in trial of teenager accused of murdering Urantsetseg Tserendorj

The jury considering its verdict in the trial of a teenager who fatally stabbed Urantsetseg Tserendorj in Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) last year has been sent home for the day.

Deliberations will resume at 10.30am on Wednesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, the jury returned to the Central Criminal Court for a second day of deliberations.

The accused, who cannot be identified as he is a minor, pleaded not guilty to Ms Tserendorj’s murder but guilty to her manslaughter on January 29th, 2021. The State did not accept his plea.

The boy, now aged 16, had also pleaded guilty to producing a knife and to attempting to rob Ms Tserendorj on a walkway between George’s Dock and Custom House Quay in the IFSC on January 20th, 2021.

Lawyers for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and for the boy delivered their closing speeches on Monday before Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring completed her charge to the jury and the seven women and five men began considering a verdict.

Michael O’Higgins SC, for the accused, said that although his client was just 14 at the time of the killing, he had developed a drug habit and went out to steal money to buy drugs.

He asked the jury to look at CCTV footage of the attack and to consider whether the fatal injury to the deceased’s neck could have been accidental.

Motive

He suggested the boy’s motive was one of robbery and that he did not intend to harm Ms Tserendorj (48), who was from Mongolia but was living and working in Dublin at the time of her death.

Seán Gillane SC, for the DPP, said that a person stabbing someone in the neck can only intend to cause serious harm.

“That is the only logical conclusion on a cold analysis of the facts,” he said. “The appropriate verdict is guilty of murder.”

Ms Justice Ring told the jury that the prosecution must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt and if they were not satisfied that the accused intended to kill or cause serious injury then the appropriate verdict is manslaughter. If they were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to kill or cause serious harm to Ms Tserendorj, then they must find him guilty of murder.

Distress

Ms Tserendorj left work shortly after 9pm on the night she was attacked and walked along the quays towards home. Shortly after 9.30pm she phoned her husband and appeared to be in some distress.

He left home and found her after a few minutes at the taxi rank by the Luas line at Connolly Station. She had a wound to her neck and while it was bleeding it did not seem significant, the trial was told.

An ambulance arrived and as she got into it she began to experience difficulty in swallowing and started coughing. She became increasingly distressed, struggled to breathe and her face became purple and her eyes closed. At the Mater hospital she was taken into a surgical theatre where medics discovered a penetrating injury to the carotid artery.

Ms Tserendorj suffered brain swelling and was placed on life support and died nine days later. A postmortem revealed that she had a neck wound 2cm below her right ear that had cut off the blood flow to her brain.