A PART OF ME DIED TOO: WIDOW OF MURDERED GARDA SPEAKS
Wife of garda murdered by south Armagh thug trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered life
AS the seasons changed from winter to spring and finally late summer, Caroline Donohoe sat through every day of the trial which eventually saw her husband’s murderer brought to justice.
She had to listen to often harrowing evidence of what happened that cold, wet night of January 25, 2013, when her beloved husband Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe was shot dead outside Lordship Credit Union in Bellurgan, Co Louth.
“It was heartbreaking on some days. Some days were really, really difficult, but I owed it to myself, my children and Adrian. It’s all I could do for him,” she says.
She had sat quietly in the courtroom day after day, listening to evidence which brought her back to that dreadful night when a knock on her door gave her the news that everyone married to an officer of the law fears.
But now her overwhelming feeling is one of relief that the trial is over and that the cold-hearted killer has been brought to justice.
While south Armagh man Aaron Brady won’t be sentenced until October, he is facing a minimum sentence of 40 years.
“It was very difficult to look at him — he showed no remorse,” she says. “I hope he spends the rest of his life in jail. That he will pay for what he did.”
Brady didn’t just murder her husband, a dedicated officer serving the community in which he lived. He robbed two young children of their father and changed Caroline’s life for ever.
“Part of my life died that night, part of who I was. I became Adrian’s widow. I hate that word... I’m his wife. I lost who I was. People see me differently. Before that I was always Caroline Deloughrey, I was a garda. That’s all I ever wanted to be.”
After his death, she found herself pushed into the spotlight as Adrian was accorded a state funeralandasthelengthyhuntfor his killer got under way.
Worst of all, she found herself without her soul mate.
“My life has totally changed. If I could only put the clock back,” she says, her voice faltering, “but we can’t do that.”
“I am still trying to pick up the pieces. People say time is a great healer, but it doesn’t change the pain I feel every day.
“I will love him to the day I die and no one else.”
Caroline and Adrian met in 1994 at the Garda Training College in Templemore.
They were in the same class and, as luck would have it, they were both assigned to Dundalk Garda Station in 1997.
“He was,” she says simply, “the love of my life.”
They got married in 2002 in her hometown of Kilkee, Co Clare, and made their home in Lordship, buying their house in 2004 when it was just a site in “a green field”, she recalls.
They became part of the community, making good friends who would stand by Caroline in her hour of greatest need.
Adrian, who grew up in Kilnaleck, Co Cavan, playing for the county’s senior team, joined the Pats as a player and then as a coach, often taking a shortcut through a fence to the grounds close to their home.
He was just 41 years of age when he was murdered.
Niall and Amy, their two children, went to school in nearby Bellurgan, just across the road from where Adrian was brutally killed. They were still sleeping upstairs in their home when
Caroline went to see Adrian’s body after he was blasted with a shotgun during the Credit Union robbery.
She has to drive past the scene whenever she goes to Dundalk.
“Some days I go past and I will spend the whole day crying as it brings it all back,” she says.
Caroline never returned to work with the gardai, where she was a member of the immigration unit, and has dedicated herself to raising her two children, now 13 and 14 years old, on her own. They are her priority and
Adrian and Caroline Donohoe on their wedding day. Left: the couple before his death and Adrian playing for St Patrick’s GFC
she has always shared with them what happened to their father in a way that was appropriate for their age.
Adrian is still a presence in their lives and they talk about him every day.
“I feel as though he is with me