Man to be sentenced for trying to poison partner of 30 years

A MAN who admitted poisoning his partner of 30 years appeared last week in Carlow Circuit Court after he told gardaí that he put Valium in her sandwich.

Judge Eugene O’Kelly heard that Mark O’Neill’s partner Helen Nolan discovered Valium tablets in a sandwich that he had made for her last August and that after taking one bite, she didn’t eat any more of it because it tasted “metallic” and that she immediately went to sleep.

Last week, 62-year-old Mr O’Neill, Cois na Coille, Pollerton, Carlow was in court for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to section 12 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, which is defined as ‘intentionally or recklessly administering, or causing to be taken, a substance which he/she knows to be capable of interfering substantially with the other’s bodily functions’.

Judge O’Kelly heard that Mr O’Neill and Ms Nolan had been in a relationship for 30 years and that they lived together at the above address in Pollerton.

The investigating garda told the court that Mr O’Neill got sick in 2009 when he had cancer and that although he’d made a good recovery, he rarely left the house, didn’t drive, didn’t work and didn’t socialise.

The court heard that their relationship had deteriorated over the years, to the extent that it could be days or weeks without them speaking to each other, and that they also had separate bedrooms. Defending counsel Ross Pratt O’Brien BL told the court that there was no violence or aggression in their relationship.

The court heard that Ms Nolan suffered from fibromyalgia and diabetes while Mr O’Neill also took medications, but that their medications were kept in two separate locations in the house.

Judge O’Kelly heard that on the day of the offence, Ms Nolan was in her bedroom on the phone when she heard Mr O’Neill on the landing outside so she asked him to make a sandwich for her. He subsequently returned with a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich, gave it to her and left the bedroom. The court heard that when Ms Nolan took a bite out of it, it tasted metallic and didn’t taste like it should have, so she put it down and didn’t have any more.

She then fell asleep, and when she woke up the following morning she still felt tired, so tired that she didn’t feel like she had slept at all. She was “overwhelmingly tired” throughout the day when she went to Tullow so she returned home to go back to bed, the court heard.

Judge O’Kelly was told that when she saw the sandwich still on her bedside locker, the bread had turned blue in places and, upon investigation, she saw blue tablets mixed into it. She went to her doctor, who said she was medically fine but advised her to go to the gardaí about the matter.

In a statement she gave to the gardaí, Ms Nolan said she had had seven car accidents in recent months but she couldn’t be sure it had anything to do with being medicated. She also told gardaí that she’d only taken a single bite of the sandwich and “God knows what would have happened” if she’d eaten the whole thing.

The investigating garda told the court that when he went to arrest Mr O’Neill, he made admissions in the patrol car saying that he’d put “mayonnaise, tomatoes and two blue Valium tablets” in the sandwich. He told gardaí that he wanted Ms Nolan to be able to relax because she’d been stressed in recent times and that he “took it upon himself” to do it and that he thought he was “doing the right thing”.

Mr O’Neill told gardaí that they were his tablets and that they could “knock a horse out for hours” they were so strong.

Judge O’Kelly was told that the defendant had denied ever doing it before and that “he had no intention of harming her because she meant too much to him” after she took care of him when he was sick with cancer.

Mr Pratt O’Brien submitted to Judge O’Kelly to adjourn sentencing until a probation report was prepared on Mr O’Neill, who has no previous convictions. Judge O’Kelly agreed, while also ordering a medical report, and adjourned the matter until 20 May next.