GAA STAR HAYES GOES FREE OVER NIGHTCLUB ATTACKS
»»Hurler given ‘a chance’ with suspended sentence »»Judge slams ‘significant and dangerous violence’
GAA star Kyle Hayes walked free from court yesterday – despite leaving a man with serious facial injuries in a nightclub attack.
The Limerick All-star hurler, 25, was given a suspended sentence for assaulting carpenter Cillian Mccarthy outside Icon on October 28, 2019.
Hayes was also ordered to pay his victim €10,000 compensation.
Judge Dermot Sheehan said Limerick hurling manager John Kiely urged him to give the five-time All -Ireland winner “a chance” – and he was giving him that chance.
The judge told Limerick Circuit Court: “An immediate custodial sentence would not benefit society.”
Hayes showed no emotion when Judge Sheehan told him to “stand up” and hear the sentences. The judge said: “The violence shown by Kyle Hayes was significant and dangerous.”
Hayes, of Ballyashea, Kildimo, Co Limerick, had denied two violent disorder charges but was found guilty by a jury.
Judge Sheehan said this meant he had to impose a custodial sentence.
The judge handed down a suspended two-year sentence on Hayes for violent disorder and a concurrent 18-month suspended sentence for violent disorder inside the nightclub on the same morning.
While Hayes was found not guilty by a jury of assault causing harm to Mr Mccarthy, Judge Sheehan said: “None of this would have happened if not for Kyle Hayes.”
Mr Mccarthy suffered trauma, underwent surgery for a fractured eye socket, and suffered loss of earnings due to the nature of his injuries.
The judge directed Hayes to pay the €10,000 in compensation to his victim, who he said was attacked by Hayes and others on the night.
The order is without prejudice to any civil proceedings now open to Mr Mccarthy, the judge said.
Judge Sheehan said the serious injuries to Mr Mccarthy had arisen out of the violence by Hayes and others on the night.
Two gardai gave evidence in the trial that they saw Hayes kicking a male on the street but Judge Sheehan said this man appeared to have been another man and not Mr Mccarthy.
Judge Sheehan said Mr Mccarthy had been an “innocent” victim on the night.
Hayes “aggressively” approached Mr Mccarthy and his friend Craig Cosgrave inside Smyths Bar, under the nightclub, warning them to “stay the f*** away” from two women they were talking to at the bar, one of whom he believed had been seeing a friend of his, the judge said.
When Mr Mccarthy told Hayes he was friends with the young women, Hayes invited him to fight and asked him, “do you know who the f*** I am?” Judge
Kicking a person who is on the ground is dangerous JUDGE DERMOT SHEEHAN YESTERDAY
Sheehan said Mr Mccarthy and Mr Cosgrave walked away upstairs to the Icon but he said Hayes and another man approached them again “aggressively” on the dancefloor and began punching Mr Mccarthy.
Judge Sheehan said while the other man threw the first punch, Hayes was the “instigator” of the violence and “punched Cillian Mccarthy continuously in the head” during the violence on the dancefloor.
And after pursuing Mr Mccarthy, who was bleeding from his head, outside the club, Hayes again “aggressively” approached him and told him he would “dig the head off him”. The judge said that while gardai were clear in their evidence Hayes was involved in attacking a man lying on the street, this was not Mr Mccarthy.
The judge said Hayes had to be “pulled away” from the male by gardai and that the hurler told one garda to “f**k off ” before he broke free of the officer’s grip and ran away.
Hayes was arrested a few streets away and later charged.
The judge said Hayes’ “manic response” to Mr Mccarthy talking to other people at a nightclub was “extraordinary”.
The judge said the jury, in finding Hayes not guilty of the stand-alone charge of assaulting Mr Mccarthy causing him harm, had “obviously taken into account” that there was no
CCTV evidence of the alleged assault outside the nightclub.
He said they had also accepted that gardai had said Hayes was kicking a male who was not Mr Mccarthy who was lying on the street, and that Mr Mccarthy acknowledged there had also been another male in the vicinity of the street attack who looked very similar to Hayes.
Judge Sheehan said he believed Hayes was “remorseful”, although no apology was heard in court.
The judge said he accepted Hayes had no previous convictions, was of good character, a good worker, had raised money for charities, and is a “successful sportsman”.
But he said he could “not ignore” he had “significant culpability” in the events on the violent events on the night. He said gardai had said they had seen Hayes kicking a man, not Mr Mccarthy, who was “lying on the ground while others were kicking him”.
The judge added: “Kicking a person who is on the ground is dangerous.”
Mr Mccarthy told the court previously he had suffered psychologically and physically. He said he loved sport and socialising but since the attack he was now “afraid” to go out at night, and he had missed out on work.
Mr Mccarthy said afterwards: “I’m just looking forward to putting it behind me now.”
Hayes made no comment to waiting journalists.