Uncertain if baby inquest will hear from father cleared of her murder
AN inquest for a baby girl will not hear from all the witnesses who testified at a criminal trial that saw her father acquitted of murder, a coroner has said. The inquest into three-month-old Caragh Walsh’s death from head injuries in 2014 will mainly focus on the oral evidence of doctors who treated her, a preliminary hearing in Belfast was told. Coroner Joe McCrisken said the inquest proceedings would have access to the transcript of Christopher O’Neill’s trial and could refer to other witness evidence during the course of the hearing. As well as medics, Caragh’s mother Tammy Louise Walsh will give evidence during the proceedings, but it was not confirmed during yesterday’s hearing whether Mr O’Neill will take to the witness box.
Mr McCrisken stressed that the inquest was a fact-finding exercise and served a different purpose to criminal proceedings.
“This is an inquest and not a criminal trial,” he told lawyers at Belfast Coroners Court.
In February 2017 a jury found Mr O’Neill, from Whiterock Road in Belfast, not guilty of murdering his baby daughter.
He has always vehemently denied he would have done anything to hurt his child.
In February 2014 Caragh was rushed from her Glasvey home in Twinbrook in west Belfast to hospital with head injuries. She died two days later.
Her inquest is due to start on April 4 and last for one week.
During his murder trial Mr O’Neill “absolutely” denied any suggestion he would have done anything to harm Caragh.
By their verdict, the jury accepted his claims that far from attacking her in a rage, he had doneallhecouldtosavethetoddler he doted on, after she had awoken with a “painful cry” and was “barely breathing”.
They rejected the prosecution case that although a caring dad, Mr O’Neill had finally found it all too much and, reaching his limit, had simply snapped and having lost control, assaulted and abused the youngster in a momentaryrage.
From the outset Mr O’Neill maintained that he would “never” have done anything to harm her. On the “fateful day... that terrible day” he described how, when watching a DVD, baby Caragh suddenly awoke in her bouncer, her arms shooting out in front of her. He tried to revive her, even giving her mouth to mouth, and tried to stimulate her with her bottle, but to no avail.
Initially, he told the court that he was “scared” because he “knew something was wrong”.
Although he accepted that at one stage he lifted her up and “shook her”, he did not know how many times he did so. When it was suggested he’d “lost it”, Mr O’Neill told the jury: “I would never hurt my daughter... that’s completely wrong. I was trying to help her.”
He told the court that he only shook her “because I thought she was dying and to this day I have had to live with the fact that I didn’t help her enough”.