A Limerick man was sentenced to life imprisonment last night at the Central Criminal Court for murder.
John Hogan (29), of Talbot Avenue, Prospect, Limerick, was found guilty by a majority verdict of the murder of Mr James O'Connor (35), a father of three, from Clarina Park, Ballinacurra, Weston, Limerick, on January 9th, 1998.
Mr O'Connor was stabbed in Limerick as he walked to a darts match a mile from his home. Before he died he was able to tell gardai the name of the attacker. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Brian McCracken refused Mr Patrick Gageby SC, defending, leave to appeal.
The court previously heard Mr O'Connor, a house painter, was walking to a darts match and had stopped at the junction of Hyde Road and Crecora Avenue.
"For no reason of any clear kind" a car pulled up, Hogan stepped out and stabbed Mr O'Connor repeatedly in the thighs and within minutes he was dying. He told gardai just before he died that "Tiger" Hogan had stabbed him.
Prosecution witness Det Sgt Thomas O'Connor had told the court that in a statement to gardai, Hogan admitted stabbing Mr O'Connor but that he did not know why he had stabbed him.
After travelling by car to the scene of the stabbing, Hogan got out because Mr O'Connor was shouting at the side of the road. "I didn't know what was wrong. I had been smoking hash and drinking cans and I saw him pull out a knife from his waist. The two of us were pulling at it. The knife could've stuck into him, I'm not sure. It was all over in seconds," the statement read. "I was very, very sorry. I should never have got out of that car. It should never have happened." In a later statement, Hogan admitted he had grabbed the knife from the dashboard of the car in which he had been travelling as a passenger and that Mr O'Connor had not been carrying a knife. State Pathologist Prof John Harbison had previously told the court that five stab wounds causing considerable loss of blood led to Mr O'Connor's death.