He beat her and told her to sleep on the f loor like a dog
A FEW weeks ago Siobhán Phillips enjoyed a day at the zoo with her two young children. She posed for family pictures, looking happy with her arms lovingly around her five-yearold son and three-year-old daughter.
She has come a long way in the two years since Adrian Crevan Mackin blasted her four times with a handgun before killing the hero garda who tried to get her away from the awful violence she had been enduring.
In the hours before the shooting Siobhán – then aged just 20 – sat down with Garda Tony Golden and told him the horrific abuse she had suffered two nights earlier. She told him of an argument she had with Crevan Mackin who thought her family were spreading rumours that he was a paedophile. She said he grabbed her by the throat and squeezed her windpipe.
He said ‘you like that’ and spat in her face.
She had to lay in bed beside him, and when she asked if he would go to sleep, he replied: ‘I am lying here thinking of strangling you.’ And, terrified, she asked: ‘Are you waiting for me to go to sleep before you strangle me?’ Revealing her ordeal to the Irish Mail on Sunday this week, Siobhán’s father Seán Phillips said the violence began after Siobhán arrived home from work to find Crevan Mackin in foul humour.
When she asked what he was thinking, he replied ‘how much of a tramp’. He then stood over her and went to hit her in the mouth. When she curled into a ball he hit her in the head.
The 25-year-old thug got a knife from the kitchen and cut Siobhán’s leg through her tracksuit bottoms. He later threw her against the wardrobe and pulled her head back until she heard her neck crack, Mr Phillips said.
Crevan Mackin told her to sleep on the floor ‘like a dog’, and as she began to doze off on the ground he kicked her in the side of the head, leaving her temporarily blinded before breaking down in tears.
Later he ordered her to put on make-up before going to work.
After she left the house she rang her stepmother Norma who came to her aid. Garda Golden became emotional after Siobhán made her statement. He said he had children of his own and this ‘ends now’.
Mr Phillips told how it could all have played out differently if gardaí had taken their statement the day before. He and Norma had taken Siobhán to the gardaí in Dundalk to make a statement, but were told to go to Omeath Garda Station the next day.
He said: ‘We expected to be taken in to a private room with a female garda, but instead we were told that we would have to make the statement in Omeath the next day. Siobhán was trying
‘He kicked her as she slept on the floor’
to lift her leg up to show him the knife marks on her leg and she was showing him her arms. When there was a point blank refusal myself and Norma said we were in fear for our lives.
‘At that stage we had all the kids out of our house. We were literally in fear for our lives. Siobhán was in an awful state. He had spent ten hours terrifying her. It was an attempted murder on her.’
Mr Phillips then took his daughter to be checked in Daisy Hill hospital in Newry before driving to Carlingford, in another attempt to make a statement to gardaí. They met two gardaí who told them they had driven by Crevan Mackin’s house and he was not home. The gardaí added they could not take a statement because they had to cover the ‘whole of the Cooley Peninsula’.
‘If they had taken a statement at that point, it could have all been different. The wheels would have been in motion and they would have realised the thug we were dealing with,’ said Mr Phillips.
The family returned home expecting Crevan Mackin to be at the house. Mr Phillips checked every room before his daughter and wife came into the house. They now know Crevan Mackin had visited the family home while they were trying to make a statement. His car was seen on CCTV at their home.
After the shooting two pipe bombs, six barrels of petrol, 700 rounds of ammunition and a gun were found. ‘He was going to massacre us that day,’ Mr Phillips added. The family are now calling for a full public inquiry into the events leading up the shooting of Siobhán and the murder of Garda Golden.
They want to know why a statement wasn’t taken from Siobhán in either Dundalk or Carlingford, and why Crevan Mackin wasn’t arrested for being in breach of his bail conditions on a separate offence, and why Garda Golden and Siobhán were allowed go into the home of Crevan Mackin alone considering the danger he posed. Mr Phillips is travelling to the Dáil on Wednesday to garner support for a full public inquiry.