A man who slashed the throat of a Filipino transvestite four days after he had sex with him has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Vincent Murtagh (23) met the victim, a male nurse, dressed in a miniskirt, high heels and makeup on June 23rd, 2007, while he was leaving Zanzibar Nightclub in the city centre.
Murtagh, who was homeless at the time of the attack but is now living in Stanhope Green, Stanhope Street, Dublin 7, complimented him on what a beautiful woman he was before they chatted and the nurse invited him back to this apartment.
The victim revealed he was a man and they engaged in both oral and anal sex. The accused left the next morning when the victim’s friends arrived for Gay Pride Parade.
Garda Damien Egan told Judge Desmond Hogan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court the nurse was having a bath when Murtagh returned on June 27th. He let him in and resumed his bath while Murtagh watched pornography on the computer.
Gda Egan said Murtagh went to the shops to buy beer and the victim sat and watched tennis on the computer but a short time later he heard someone sneaking up on him before his neck was slashed. Murtagh cut him a second time as the victim screamed and grabbed at him, then slipped and fell in a pool of blood as Murtagh left the apartment.
Gda Egan said the victim shouted out the window for help and tried to ring an ambulance but couldn’t stop shaking while he wrapped a towel around his neck to stop the bleeding. Paramedics arrived 15 minutes later and took him to hospital where he was given four pints of blood.
Several arteries and veins had been cut and the doctor considered it a life threatening wound because if the victim hadn’t used the towel he would have died of a cardiac arrest. He had recovered with just a scar to his neck.
Murtagh went straight from the apartment to Store Street Garda station and told gardaí what had happened. He brought them to the scene just as the victim was being put in the ambulance.
Murtagh pleaded guilty to assault causing serious harm to the nurse on June 27th, 2007 and to possession of a knife and obstructing a garda on June 22nd, 2007.
The court heard that the day before Murtagh met the nurse he had been stopped on Dame Street while carrying a butcher’s knife. He told gardaí he wanted to threaten someone he had earlier had a fight with because he didn’t want him “to think I was a faggot”.
Defence counsel Patrick Marrinan SC, said the victim was such “a most convincing female” that the ambulance crew thought they were dealing with a woman. Mr Marrinan said Murtagh was confused and “in great turmoil” after his first encounter with the victim and in the intervening days had signed himself into St James’s Hospital as a suicide risk.
He said his client was homeless at the time, was having problems with drugs and had not come to terms with his sexuality. Both of his parents had died as a result of heroin abuse.
Judge Hogan said there was “ample evidence of premeditation” on Murtagh’s part. “He bought the knife with the intention of using it” and inflicted injuries on a most dangerous place of the victim’s body. He noted that Murtagh was lucky that the victim had been a qualified nurse and was able to deal with his injuries.
Judge Hogan suspended the last two years of the sentence. He ordered that Murtagh be under post-release supervision for two years and undergo psycho-sexual counselling if necessary after he said that the accused was at a serious risk of re-offending if he didn’t get help.
Murtagh was given a two year suspended sentence for the offence relating to the butcher’s knife.