Boy, 16, to be sentenced in connection with fatal Halloween stabbing
A 16-year-old boy will be sentenced next week in connection with the death of a young man at a Halloween bonfire in Dublin in 2015.
He was due to stand trial for the murder of Lorcan O’Reilly but the DPP accepted his plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter.
The boy was just shy of his 15th birthday when he stabbed 21-year-old Lorcan O’Reilly during a row at a bonfire party on Halloween night 2015.
Lorcan was rushed to hospital but died the following day.
The court heard the boy had been 'mouthing off' and left the complex when Lorcan took a hurley off him, but that he returned with a knife.
Lorcan’s father Patrick said “nothing has been the same since that night”.
In his victim impact statement, he said “you shouldn’t have to bury your child before you ... he had his whole life ahead of him”
Instead of celebrating his birthday in a couple of months, he said the family would be replacing a present for a headstone.
Mr. Justice Patrick McCarthy heard the boy’s family life has been “unpredictable and chaotic” and he was asked to as lenient as possible.
The boy will be sentenced next week.