A man has been found not guilty of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to his then partner and their young daughter, as well as threatening to set fire to their home with all three of them inside the property.
Thomas Lynch (39), with an address at Woodhaven, Castletroy, had denied the charges before a jury at Limerick Circuit Court.
The jury retired on Wednesday and it took just over 90 minutes to acquit Mr Lynch on all charges, by a unanimous decision.
Mr Lynch had been facing one count of making a threat to kill or cause serious harm to Nicola O’Callaghan on October 2nd, 2018, and one count of threatening to cause criminal damage to their home on the same date.
The relationship between the accused and Ms O’Callaghan (31) had soured in the run-up to the alleged threats, the court heard.
Ms O’Callaghan gave evidence that Mr Lynch had held a “knife” and a “petrol lighter” in the kitchen of their then shared home and told her he was going to kill her, their two-year-old daughter, and himself.
She claimed Mr Lynch told her: “I will stab all three of us to death and burn down the house with all of us in it.”
“My body froze, I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Ms O’Callaghan said after Mr Lynch had threatened her, she put their daughter to bed in the house and then went to sleep in her and Mr Lynch’s bedroom.
She claimed that in the early hours of the following morning she was woken by Mr Lynch lying on top of her and “roaring” at her and accusing her of “cheating on him”.
“He said that I was a fat c**t and a tramp, and he took my mobile phone off me.”
She also alleged that Mr Lynch “threatened to remove the handbrake cable” from her car, in order to prevent her and their daughter from leaving the house.
Ms O’Callaghan said she decided to leave Mr Lynch the following day, and told the court, “I knew my life and (daughter’s) life was in danger - that’s why I left.”
Arguments over money
She agreed under cross-examination from Mr Lynch’s defence barrister, Eimear Carey BL, that the relationship had soured after the couple started arguing over money.
Ms O’Callaghan also agreed she did not make a complaint to gardaí about the alleged threats for over two weeks, she said she believed if she had immediately contacted gardaí, she and her daughter would have been killed: “By the time the gardaí would have come out (to the house) we would be dead.”
When questioned by Mr Lynch’s barrister why she hadn’t grabbed her daughter and left the house immediately after the alleged threats, Ms O’Callaghan said she was afraid of what Mr Lynch might do.
Ms O’Callaghan disagreed with Ms Carey when she put it to the witness that the alleged threats never happened and that is why she had not immediately contacted gardaí.
She also disagreed with Ms Carey that she had been “intimate” with Mr Lynch in March and April 2019, seven months after the alleged threats.
Gardaí arrested Mr Lynch on April 2nd, 2019, and said he was cooperative and provided a statement completely denying the allegations, which he described as “bulls**t”.
When gardaí put the allegations to Mr Lynch, he replied: “If that was the case why did [Ms O’Callaghan] leave it over a week, why did she stay the night, she is using our child as a weapon against me.”
“She lies to everyone, ask her parents, we have been sleeping together since the 16th March, why would she be sleeping with me if she was in fear of me, she has bipolar or something,” Mr Lynch claimed in the garda interview.
Mr Lynch also told gardaí he was “heartbroken” after the couple’s relationship broke down. He said his daughter was “the apple of my eye” and he would “never in a million years” harm her.
When gardaí asked him if he knew how to remove a handbrake cable from a car, Mr Lynch replied that Ms O’Callaghan’s car had “an electronic button, there is no cable”.
