A man accidentally shot his own sister dead at her birthday party in a celebration that turned into a ‘nightmare’.
Derek Boyd accidentally gunned down his own sister in an ‘unpardonable sin’ that led to him being jailed for two years.
Sandra Boyd had been celebrating her birthday party at a home in Finglas, Dublin, on March 19, this year, reports Irish Mirror.
Boyd, 28, had armed himself with the gun some weeks prior because of threats made to him and his family from a ‘gangland’ figure.
The court heard this happened after Boyd had gone to this man to ask why his teenage nephew had been beaten up.
On the night of the accident he was still afraid of these threats and secretly held the gun in his pocket as he walked his sister out.
He had cocked the gun to arm it and when he went back inside he took it out, when nobody was watching him, to disarm it.
Boyd said he was pulling the slide back to eject the bullet when his finger slipped and the gun fired.
The heartbroken brother described how his sister dropped to the ground and he went to her side and claimed he said: “please help her, I'm sorry”.
He heard somebody saying, “She is going to be OK, just run” and he left, later telling gardaí he felt ashamed and sorry for leaving her like that.
Boyd pleaded guilty to manslaughter of his sister and at a previous hearing his mother, Teresa Boyd, asked the judge to let her son out of prison.
She said the fatal shooting shattered their family and left her son “broken beyond compare”.
“He will relive this nightmare for the rest of his life. He will struggle to live his life. I wish I could turn back time and have all my children be with me,” she said.
Sentencing on Friday, Judge Pauline Codd said this was a tragic, serious and unusual case.
Judge Codd noted the irony in that, by illegally acquiring a firearm to try and protect his family, Boyd had inflicted the very loss he had hoped to avoid.
She read from a letter handed into court by Boyd in which he outlined how he regretted lowering himself to pick up a firearm in the first place. He said that procuring a gun had been the “biggest mistake of my life”.
Due to the case’s exceptional circumstances, the judge departed from the presumptive minimum sentence of five years for firearm charges.
They suspended the final three years of a five-year sentence for the firearms offences, and gave him four years with the final two years suspended for the manslaughter.
She ordered that both sentences run concurrently meaning he will serve just two years in prison.
When gardaí arrived, the victim was still alive but they were lied to and told a gunman had entered the house, shot her and fled.
A solicitor for Boyd contacted gardaí the next day to say he was in a psychiatric ward and would provide a statement on discharge. Three days later he was discharged and arrested, presenting to gardaí as “utterly inconsolable”.
He told gardaí he loved his sister and would never intentionally do anything to hurt her. He said he wanted to be punished. He said he couldn't name who he got the gun from because that would put his family at risk.
