A FORMER car dealer who viciously assaulted his partner and her female friend after a night out, has been sentenced to four years in jail. Garda Joanne Brogan told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that Shane Lyons (41) began the attack on his ex-girlfriend by pushing her on to a bed and strangling her until her body went limp and her eyes “felt like they were about to pop”.
Lyons, a former car dealership owner, strangled Fiona Kelly twice more during the incident and flung her friend Kerry Lee Ball, whom he had met for the first time that night and who had given birth six weeks previously, out the front door on to her back.
Garda Brogan said some of the attack was captured on Lyons’s home CCTV system, which was seized as part of the investigation.
Lyons, of Rock Grove, Harold’s Grange, Rathfarnham, initially elected for trial but eventually pleaded guilty to assaulting Ms Kelly and Ms Ball causing them harm at his address on August 31st, 2009.
Ms Ball took the witness stand and read from her victim impact statement, in which she said she has suffered a loss of more than €4,000 in counselling, lost wages and medical costs.
She said she constantly wakes up with nightmares and began relying on prescription drugs to cope. She said Lyons had “kicked the spirit out of a once social, bubbly girl. You’ve changed me as a person in your fists and your anger,” she said.
The court heard Lyons has seven previous convictions, including two minor assaults and one for possession of cannabis valued at over €100,000, for which he received a four-year sentence in 2000.
Garda Brogan told Cathleen Noctor, prosecuting, that Ms Kelly had left Lyons, Ms Ball and a third person at a city centre nightclub without telling anyone and returned to her home.
She later told gardaí Lyons returned to the premises, told her to get out of bed and began “ranting and raving” about her leaving him as she gathered some personal things from downstairs.
Lyons then pushed her against a downstairs bedroom wall, followed her back upstairs, flung her on to a bed and strangled her until her body went limp.
He locked her in the room, told her to sleep on the floor and removed the battery from her mobile phone when she tried to call a relative for help.