Cork father of five, Barry Daly, who was 44 when he was murdered in the early hours of Sunday 12 October last year outside his home at Rockview Terrace in Doneraile, was described by a judge today as an exceptional person who showed many examples of kindness in his life.
Mr Daly died of catastrophic head and facial injuries that were inflicted with a golf club after being attacked by Alex Deady of Glen View, Convent Road in Doneraile, and two teenage boys, who cannot be named because of their age.
Today, Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford said that the case of Mr Daly’s death is one that has affected his local community and changed Doneraile forever, RTÉ said.
She also said that it was clear from victim impact statements that Mr Daly, who worked as a postman, cared for the community and was an exceptional person who cared to older people while working, noting many examples of his kindness “over his short life”.
Today at the Central Criminal Court in Cork, Judge Lankford imposed the mandatory life sentence for murder on Deady. The teenager will be sentenced later this month. She said Deady’s actions in attacking Barry Daly’s life were “not very prolonged but were brutal”.
A jury had previously heard that Mr Daly had either accidentally or intentionally struck Deady’s girlfriend during a row at a GAA celebration. Deady and the two teenagers followed the postman home having armed themselves with golf clubs.
Mr Daly’s partner had had testified that she was lying in bed when she heard a voice outside saying “I’m going to kill you”. When she went outside she found Barry Daly lying on the ground.
“There was blood everywhere, I checked for a pulse. I knew he was dead. I was screaming at my mother to ring an ambulance. Blood was coming out of his ears, his mouth, his nose, [there was] blood everywhere. The back of his head was smashed,” she said.
In her victim impact statement, Katie O’Reilly said that she and Barry Daly had been together twenty years and “never left each other’s side”.
She said that celebrating Father’s Day now means bringing their children to their father’s grave with balloons, and that no child should ever have to spend Father’s Day standing at a graveyard missing their dad.
“Barry has already missed so much. He missed Bodhi’s first day of preschool. He will miss school achievements, graduations, first cars, first jobs, weddings and grandchildren. “Bodhi was only three years old (when his father died). He still runs to the door when it knocks shouting for his daddy,” she said.
“He spoke often about grandchildren and joked that after all boys he deserved some granddaughters too,” Ms O’Reilly said.
Mr Deady said that he had never intended to kill Mr Daly. He said that he understood that Daly’s children were without a father because of his actions.
“I think about it daily and will for the rest of my life. I understand ‘sorry’ will never bring Barry Daly back,” he said.