Brave shooting survivor Sinead Connolly has been reunited with her little girl after leaving hospital and moving into their newly-adapted home.
The 34-year-old, blasted three times as her seven-year-old daughter Leah looked on in horror, is finally home after spending 22 months in medical care.
Sinead is now a wheelchair user after one of the bullets hit her spine, but she is determined to start a new chapter in her life.
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Speaking to the Mirror from her new home in Ballyfermot, Dublin, she said: “It’s so nice to finally feel a bit normal again.
“Seeing Leah every day is amazing compared to only seeing her once a week in the hospital, it was tough.
“It was hard to get one-on-one time alone with her in the hospital, now we can sit and have a proper mammy and daughter chat.
“We talked for about two hours the other day and she is able to come in and give me kisses and a hug before she goes to school.”
Sinead now lives miles away from the flat in Bluebell, south Dublin, where she was shot after answering the door to a masked gunman on March 6, 2021.
She revealed how she became overwhelmed with emotions on her first night in her new home.
She said: “Leah was running around playing, the TV was on and my sister was in the kitchen and I was sitting on the couch just crying. It really hit me.
“I was crying non-stop for about 10 minutes. It was all so surreal and I was so happy and it was just so overwhelming to finally be home.”
Describing her first trip out to the shops in almost two years, she added: “I went to Liffey Valley the other day for the first time and I even bought some new runners.
“I have been to the hairdressers too. It has all given me a great boost.”
Sinead spent 15 days in a coma and died twice on the operating table.
In her victim impact statement to the court she told how she’d been left paralysed from the waist down.
The bullets shattered her collarbone and spine, broke her ribs and punctured her lung.
Dean McCarthy, of Bluebell, was jailed for 15 years in March 2022 after he pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
Last May, Joseph Byrne, of La Touche Road, Bluebell, admitted possession of a semi-automatic handgun with intent to endanger life and was jailed for nine-and-a-half years.
In December 2022 Paul Mooney, of Ring Street, Inchicore, was jailed for five years for disposing of the firearm used in the gun attack.
Sinead said it was her daughter Leah who gave her the strength to carry on when she was at her lowest point.
She said: “I wasn’t going to let it break me. I was away from Leah and she gave me the strength to get to where I am now.
“In hospital she brought me in a stone with a big and little angel on it, a daughter looking up to her mother.
“When I was at my worst in ICU and I was doing tiny weights, which were so hard to lift, I would look at that stone and push through.
"That kept me going and I kept saying to myself ‘I need to get home to my daughter’.”
Brave Sinead, who is hoping to train as a counsellor to help others, wants to get back to living her life.
She said: “I’m still trying to adjust and get into some sort of routine.
“I’m currently waiting on a letter from my occupational therapist so I can.
“My daughter is already asking me when I can collect her from school, but I can’t until I get the wheelchair motorised.
“I was meant to get it after I came to the house three weeks ago but have now been told I will have to go on a waiting list.”
Now friends and family are raising funds for two surgeries Sinead desperately needs in order to return to as normal a life as possible.
Unless she can pay to have them done privately she faces a three-year wait.
Her sister Orla said the fundraising would pay for Sinead to get a Baclofen Pump fitted, which would stop her body from going into spasm.
She also needs a Mitrofanoff tube fitted which would allow her to go to the toilet on her own.
Sinead concluded: “It really is a miracle I survived. I was told by doctors I had the most catastrophic injuries they had seen.
“I can accept I am in a wheelchair because of how bad things were for me when I woke up.
“I wanted to get strong to get out and home to Leah and I have worked very hard in order to do that.
“I was angry at the start as I wasn’t due to an accident, it was taken from me. But it is what it is and I’m determined now to get stronger.”
If you would like to donate to Sinead’s GoFundMe account you can do so here.
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