Six years for causing grandfather’s death
A MAN who killed a ‘loving’ grandfather by pushing him down a flight of stairs at a railway station has been jailed for six years.
Marc McKinlay assaulted Donald Maguire, 58, at Edinburgh’s Haymarket on February 20, 2020.
The 38-year-old pushed Mr Maguire, which caused him to fall and hit his head on the ground. He later died in hospital.
The thug then kicked Mr Maguire’s son Brian before striking him on the head with a bag containing cans of alcohol. He was arrested after getting on a train. McKinlay, of Cowdenbeath, Fife, was found guilty of culpable homicide at the end of a four-day trial last month. He had also pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Maguire’s son to his ‘severe injury’.
At the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, judge Fiona Tait told McKinlay: ‘There is no sentence which the court can impose that can bring Mr Maguire back to his family or indeed reflect his loss.’
Mr Maguire died from his injuries at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh on March 4, 2020.
The court heard Mr Maguire and his son had been on a night out in Edinburgh and had gone to the station to catch a train home to Fife. Personal assistant Katie McCulloch, 40, witnessed the incident and also saw McKinlay on a train afterwards.
She said: ‘I remember feeling quite frightened. He was carrying some beers. I thought he was drunk. He was saying “Oh for f**k’s sake, he’s a f ***** g a ****** e”.’
Yesterday, McKinlay’s defence solicitor advocate Iain McSporran, QC, told judge Tait that McKinlay assaulted Mr Maguire in the ‘heat of the moment’.
Judge Tait also gave McKinlay 15 months for assaulting Brian Maguire, to run concurrently with the six-year term.