Pensioner on mobility scooter killed by thug just out of prison
Family of Clare native stabbed in London angry as killer avoids a murder trial
A CAREER criminal yesterday admitted killing a Co. Clare grandfather riding on a mobility scooter.
Lee Byer, 46, was just five days out of prison when he stabbed Ennistymon-born busker Thomas O’Halloran in the neck and chest in a west London underpass.
His 87-year-old victim, who had been busking to raise money for Ukraine, travelled 75 yards on his scooter trying to find help before bleeding to death.
Mr O’Halloran’s family told of their fury yesterday after the prosecution dropped their murder charge and accepted Byer’s plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Mental health reports had found Byer was psychotic, hearing voices, suffering from paranoid delusions and paranoid schizophrenia.
Speaking with a heavy stutter from the dock at the Old Bailey, he admitted manslaughter and possession of an offensive weapon – pleas that were accepted by the UK’s criminal agency.
Mr O’Halloran’s daughter Jeanne, 64, told the Times that prosecutors made the decision without consulting them. She added: ‘I am disgusted by this. He will be freed from prison to kill again.
‘He wil be freed to kill again’
We knew he had a previous conviction for robbery but we didn’t know he had just come out of prison when he killed my dad. The family would have preferred for him to have a murder trial so we could see justice being done and let normal people decide if he is guilty or not.’
The Crown Prosecution Service said representatives met Mr O’Halloran’s family to explain the decision to accept Byer’s plea.
Spokesman Julius Capon said: ‘We reached this conclusion having carefully reviewed extensive medical evidence from experts who agreed that Byer’s actions were substantially impaired by hallucinations caused by paranoid schizophrenia.
‘With this detailed expert medical evidence in mind and having thoroughly reviewed all the evidence, we decided that there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction for murder. Our thoughts remain with Mr O’Halloran’s family.’ Byer, once described as a Fagintype character who recruited young children into crime, has 15 convictions for 30 offences.
He was released from Wormwood Scrubs prison five days before the fatal attack in August 2022, having been recalled to jail after being accused of beating up an ex-girlfriend.
He was on probation after receiving 12 years for a violent armed robbery in 2011. After stabbing Mr O’Halloran, Byer tried to burn his clothes in his mother’s back garden in Southall, west London.
When he was arrested two days later, he told police he was in prison at the time and was not the blood-soaked man seen on CCTV.
Mr O’Halloran was a talented musician who began life in Ennistymon. His nephew, also named Thomas O’Halloran, last year described his uncle’s murder as ‘horrendous’.
Speaking to RTÉ News in Ennistymon, Thomas said the family were numb at the loss.
‘It’s complete numbness with the loss of our uncle. It’s been horrendous, absolutely terrifying that something like this could happen to such a gentle, kind person,’ he said. ‘At that stage in somebody’s life, to reach 87 is a feat in itself, but to be tragically taken away from his direct family and his extended family here in Ireland, it’s senseless. Absolutely senseless.
‘The violence, seemingly for no particular reason, has completely shocked all of us. It’s numbing. It’s unbearable to think about.’
Thomas said his uncle was a kind man who often put others first, describing him as ‘always caring, always giving’.
He said: ‘Especially with the Ukraine crisis, it was always his nature always to give back. He understood what it was like to be an immigrant when he moved to England so long ago and obviously how hard it was back then. He was always so caring like that.’
Linda O’Halloran, one of his nieces, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘We’re the most open-hearted people, but this is very hard for my parents.
‘It’s very raw and they’re trying to come to terms with it.’
In a bizarre twist of fate, Byer’s prolific offending meant his life may have intersected with Mr O’Halloran’s 23 years before their fatal encounter.
Byer was accused in 1999 of leaving two loaded handguns in the Hammersmith hotel where Mr O’Halloran worked as a maintenance engineer.
Judge Mark Lucraft adjourned sentencing in the latest case until May 10.