STABBED 16 TIMES & SET ON FIRE AFTER EX SPREAD RUMOURS

Man remanded in custody after admitting role in brutal attack

A DRUG dealer was stabbed 16 times in his home and set on fire after his ex spread a false rumour that he was a Garda informant.

Ciaran Murphy, 29, was found in a dog cage in Co Offaly by a passers-by who noticed his cottage was in flames.

He was left with life-threatening injuries after he suffered 96% burns from his neck down and multiple stab wounds including into his heart cavity.

Mr Murphy now has no ears and almost five years after the attack he is still bleeding from some of the wounds that cover his body.

David Keena, 21, was yesterday remanded in continuing custody pending sentence later this month after he admitted he was in the cottage when Mr Murphy was stabbed and had petrol poured over him.

Keena, of Carrig Mor, Ballynacargy, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing serious harm and criminal damage by way of arson at Mr Murphy’s home on Coolcor, Rhode, on September 7, 2015.

He has 63 previous convictions for mainly road traffic offences but was sentenced to six years in prison in April 2017 at Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court for a drug crime.

Defence solicitor Anne Rowland said her client was accepting responsibility on the basis that he aided and abetted another male.

Det Sgt Caroline Lyng agreed with prosecutor Garrett Mccormack that Mr Murphy’s former girlfriend was high on drugs when she informed the other man that the victim was an informant.

Det Sgt Lyng confirmed there was no truth to this but the woman was concerned Mr Murphy was in danger of being attacked and believed that by spreading this rumour she was protecting him. She said he was known to local gardai at the time as a low-level drug dealer.

Det Sgt Lyng agreed with Ms Rowland that Mr Murphy was being supplied with drugs by a man named in court as “Mr C” who died unexpectedly and a drug debt of €2,500 that Mr Murphy owed him, was passed on to the other man.

He then began supplying Mr Murphy with cannabis and tablets and Mr Murphy, unable to pay for the drugs or the earlier debt, gave the man one of his dogs as part-payment.

Det Sgt Lyng agreed with Ms Rowland that on the night of the attack, Mr Murphy’s former girlfriend told some people in a pub she was socialising with that he was a Garda informant.

She was then told that she needed to come into town “to talk to a friend of Mr C’s”. The Det Sgt accepted a suggestion from counsel that the woman was then “frogmarched” into Mulligar to speak to the other man. She was put into the back of a car and told him that Mr Murphy was a Garda informant and he thanked her for telling him.

“Then he was clearly vent on revenge,” Ms Rowland said referring to the fact that the other male and Keena then drove out to Mr Murphy’s home, after buying a jerry can of petrol en route.

In a victim impact statement read out in court by Mr Mccormack, Mr Murphy said there were times he wished he had not survived. He is also“consumed” with fear, anxiety, panic attacks.

Shaun Groome, 31, of Ballinderry, Mullingar, Westmeath, was charged with assault causing serious harm at a sitting in Tullamore District Court in November 2015. He has yet to be prosecuted over his alleged role as there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

Judge Karen O’connor adjourned the case to July 28 for sentencing.