A mum who was gunned down in front of her daughter has spoken about the attack that left with her with life-changing injuries.
Mother-of-one Sinead Connolly was left paralysed after being shot three times as her seven-year-old daughter Leah looked on in horror. The gun attack took place at their home in the Bernard Curtis House apartments in Bluebell, Dublin, on March 6, 2021.
The 34-year-old was left wheelchair bound after one of the bullets hit her in the spine. She is in St James’s Hospital while she awaits the completion of her newly adapted home. Last April, Dean McCarthy, 33, of Bluebell, was jailed for 15 years after he pleaded guilty to Ms Connolly’s attempted murder.
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Sinead said Leah stopped eating and sleeping after witnessing her mother lying in a pool of blood. The youngster is having bad panic attacks and nightmares following the shooting and Sinead complained about the lack of psychiatric help available.
She told Irish Sunday Mirror that while she has been left in a wheelchair the appalling events which took place on that day have had a life-changing effect on her daughter’s mental health. She said: “She saw my body lying there and bleeding and blood bubbling from my mouth and eyes rolling and kept saying, ‘Holy God, please don’t let my mammy die’.
“She kept looking at my face and trying to reassure me telling me my make-up was perfect. That had a huge impact on her. She has said since how she felt like she was having little heart attacks that day, her poor little body was probably in shock and heart was probably pounding so fast.
“Every time she hears a bang still she jumps. She has a worry bear that my sister got her too and she thinks the teddy swallows her problems after she tells them to it.
“She does tell me she misses me, that she’s sad. She’s a different little girl to the one she used to be. She used to be full of life, doing cartwheels around the place.
“She is making slow steady progress now but that’s no thanks to it being offered to her.” In May, Joseph Byrne, 33, with an address at La Touche Road, Bluebell, Dublin 12 pleaded guilty to possession of a semi-automatic handgun, with intent to endanger life on March 6, 2021 at Bluebell in Dublin 12.
Byrne was jailed for nine-and-a-half years by the Central Criminal Court last week and the hearing was told that he gave his friend the handgun that was used to shoot Sinead. Judge Paul McDermott said there had been tension between Ms Connolly and her neighbour Dean McCarthy for many years.
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He described Byrne’s actions as “reckless, irresponsible and dangerous”. He added the victim had come very close to death and her daughter, who “cowered” under a table, was subjected to a terrifying ordeal.
The consequences to Ms Connolly and her daughter have been ‘devastating’, he said. But a year-and-a-half on from the shooting Sinead told the Irish Sunday Mirror that no one ever approached her to offer Leah public therapy.
Instead her sister Orla, who is now Leah’s guardian, had to search out the help she needed. She said: “She was never offered any counselling despite what she witnessed, the mental health services in this country are a joke.
“My sister Orla had to go looking for it. The public services available have a huge waiting list and she would have been waiting months too had she gone onto them.
“Thankfully a woman who works at Leah’s former school, the Oblates in Inchicore, mentioned a local family resource centre to Orla that could possibly help. The Family Resource Centre in the Liberties has been absolutely brilliant. Orla makes a donation to it each week but she has come on so much through them.
"There is also a great thing at her new school, St Ultans. It’s a nurture room where she gets to go every day and talk about her worries. She has benefited so much and has come on leaps and bounds in helping her to process the horrific trauma she went through after seeing her mother covered in blood.”
Meanwhile, Sinead said despite receiving some psychiatric treatment while in intensive care and at the National Rehabilitation Centre in Dun Laoghaire, she has struggled to get any since. She said: “I saw one when I was in high dependency and then in rehab but have seen no one since, it hasn’t been consistent. I really needed to talk to someone in the run up to the court cases.
“It was a huge trauma that I went through. I died twice on the operating table and was only given an 8% chance of survival. I still have panic attacks and nightmares and in the run up to the court cases it got worse.
“Only this week I was told someone would be coming to see me. Offenders get more mental health support in prison than I have received.”
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