Jail for man who held knife to his infant son’s throat

‘I’ll do you and your families’

A MAN who held a knife to his infant son’s throat after earlier warning his family ‘you’ll never see him again’ has received an 18-month jail sentence.

Seán Power, 24, with an address at Manor Street, Waterford, pleaded guilty at Clonmel Circuit Court to making a threat to his own mother that he would kill or injure his 18month-old son at his former address at 64 Treacy Park, Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary.

He received a five-year sentence for this offence, with three-and-ahalf years suspended. He also received lesser sentences for assaulting his former partner, Louise Gahon, and assaulting his mother’s partner, Francis Walsh, on the same occasion, September 30 last. Charges relating to making threats to gardaí were not proceeded with by the State, on the basis that the facts of those would also be outlined.

The court heard on Tuesday morning that a report of a ‘domestic incident’ at Treacy Park was reported to gardaí in Carrick at about 12.25am on September 30. On arrival, two gardaí were waved down by two males and told that a row had taken place between Power and his mother and girlfriend. During the row, father-oftwo Power had run upstairs and grabbed his son from bed, and returned downstairs. He then opened the door of a stove and told those present: ‘You’ll never see him again, say goodbye’.

He assaulted Francis Walsh three times on the back of the head.

Power then went into the kitchen, ‘grabbed a large knife and threatened to kill himself’, Sgt Kieran O’Regan told the court. ‘He held it up to his son’s throat.’ At about 12.45am, Francis Walsh gestured at gardaí to enter the house after Seán Power had left the knife down. He was arrested and, while leaving the house, made an attempt to attack his brother. While being transported by the gardaí, he told one of the gardaí, ‘I’ll do you and the other guard and your families’.

Power said he would ‘get off’ as he only had to say he went into a diabetic coma and couldn’t remember anything. The court heard that Power had type-one diabetes since childhood. He also had a claim before the Residential Institutions Redress Board as a result of something that had happened to him as a child.

At the Garda station he initially refused to be interviewed but later told gardaí that he had opened the stove on the night because he was cold, and never had any intention of harming his child.

He said he removed the child from the bed because the child was ‘crying and they were all coming at me’. He added that he intended to stab himself in the neck with the knife but had no intention of hurting his son.

Judge Thomas Teehan ordered the defendant to give ‘irrevocable authority’ to his solicitor to provide €5,000 from any payment received from the Redress Board for his children. He also ordered him to stay away from his former partner and other injured parties in the case.