Man who used rock to bash friend is guilty of murder

A MAN who claimed he was acting in self-defence when he bludgeoned his friend to death with a heavy rock has been convicted of murder.

Father-of-one Thomas O’Connor, 29, was charged with murdering John O’Brien, 22, on June 4, 2010.

He had pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to Mr O’Brien’s manslaughter, at Farrankelly Road, Delgany, Co. Wicklow.

O’Connor had admitted hitting his friend over the head with the 1.6kg boulder ‘two or three times’ but said he only did so to protect himself after Mr O’Brien attacked him.

A post-mortem revealed Mr O’Brien, from Burnaby Lawns in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, died from ‘catastrophic injuries’ as a result of blunt-force trauma to the head.

The nine-day trial heard the two men had started drinking together after bumping into one another outside a supermarket hours before the fatal attack. Counsel for the defence said the pair ‘knew each other and socialised with each other, possibly drinking to excess’.

The accused, of Burnaby Court, Greystones, claimed he had got ‘a couple of boxes to the head from John’ before he struck him with the rock and that the victim ‘was still moving’ when he fled the scene.

The prosecution disputed this claim, saying that a medical examination of the accused after his arrest showed ‘no signs of head injuries’, while paramedics said all signs of life from the victim were absent when they arrived minutes later.

A jury at the Central Criminal Court took just under four hours yesterday to find O’Connor, who was 22 at the time of the killing, guilty of murder. He faces a mandatory life sentence.

This is the second time O’Connor has been convicted of Mr O’Brien’s murder. In June 2010, he was found guilty of the offence following a trial. However, in November 2014 the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned this verdict and ordered a retrial.