A MAN who admitted trying to kill his “life-long friend” in an apparent mercy killing after he suffered a stroke was jailed for three years yesterday.
Thomas Charles Hawkes (59) went to the Royal Victoria Hospital last June where William Cousins was being treated.
Prosecuting lawyer Amanda Brady said although it was “strictly out of visiting hours”, the sister allowed him to visit. Although Mr Cousins had been “badly affected” by the stroke, she said, he was not in a vegetative state and was capable of sitting up in a chair.
She added that Hawkes’s actions had not had any detrimental effect on Mr Cousin’s life.
On the day of Hawkes’s visit on June 8th last year, he pulled the curtains around his friend’s bed. He was seen by a member of staff “hunched over him and he appeared to be holding his nose closed with his left hand and his right hand was over his mouth”.
Ms Brady said when the sister physically removed Hawkes’s hands from Mr Cousins, he told her: “I can’t let him live like this.”
Mr Cousins died last December.
Hawkes, Rosslea Way in the Rathcoole estate, pleaded guilty to trying to murder Cousins, who was once a leading loyalist in the UVF.