‘I miss home’ says widow savagely beaten by thugs
Attacker jailed for eight years over vicious assault on woman who can’t face return to house
AN elderly woman who was subjected to a vicious beating by two men has told how she cannot now return to the home she had lived in for more than 50 years.
Eva Sutton, 91, recalled her ordeal as one of her attackers, Michael Cash, 25, was jailed yesterday for eight years.
The two perpetrators were on bail at the time of the incident – and have more than 120 convictions between them.
Ms Sutton, a widow who lived alone, suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs and a broken nose during the attack in September 2015. Yesterday, she said that she has had not returned to her beloved home in Bray, Co. Wicklow, since the ordeal.
The courageous pensioner had raised her family in the house – but she now lives in a nursing home. Ms Sutton said she had ‘a lot of happy memories’ of her home but, following the attack, she could not even bring herself to look at it as she passed by.
She told RTÉ News: ‘I haven’t a home any longer, and it’s changed to this day. I was still able to do everything for myself at home, and go out and about, go out to the shops, meet my friends.
‘I miss all that. I miss the people of Bray. I miss Bray and I miss all my friends in Bray. I was very independent. I know a time was coming that I would eventually have to give up but I wasn’t ready for that, anything near that.’
Cash, from Ashlawn Park in Ballybrack, Dublin, and his accomplice Jamie O’Brien beat and kicked Ms Sutton in the head and body during the robbery.
Cash, who has 96 previous convictions, including 29 for previous thefts and burglaries, was on bail at the time of the incident.
Recalling the night of the attack, Ms Sutton told how the thieves must have woken her up and then demanded money and jewellery. She told them she had none, as she was a pensioner.
She said they had already found her ‘good jewellery’ which she had worn earlier that day and left ‘in a little jug covered with tissue paper’. She added: ‘I asked them to please leave me alone.
‘They didn’t. I had seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken nose. My legs were all cut. They dragged me from the hall to the sitting room by my hair. He tied my legs... I don’t know if they left or if I was unconscious.
‘When I came to, I loosened my legs and got up. I got out to the door and I looked up the road. It was getting bright and there was a man standing at the bus stop up the road. I shouted up to him to help me, and he seemed to have ignored me.’
Cash was yesterday sentenced to ten years in prison with two suspended at Wicklow Circuit Court. His co-accused O’Brien, 23, formerly of Hazelwood, Bray, was sentenced last April to ten years in prison, with two suspended, for the crime. O’Brien was also on bail at the time of the incident, and has 30 previous convictions.
Judge Michael O’Shea yesterday said no mercy or sympathy had been shown to the victim. He said the perpetrators had attacked her, robbed her of her independence and ruined her life.
Cash and O’Brien had even tried but failed to pull the wedding ring off her finger, he said. She had been a gregarious and outgoing, but a court report found she would have a nervous breakdown if she visited the house again.
Judge O’Shea said that what they did to her amounted to torture, and that they inflicted the maximum pain and suffering.