Moane faces 'prospect of never being freed'
Published 14 Sep 2012 15:00
Gary Philip Moane, the drunken self-confessed killer of former Fermanagh GAA player Ciaran Woods, was told today that while he will serve at least five years, he also faced the prospect of never being freed.
Enniskillen Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, had heard that the alcoholic didn't even know Mr Woods and had latched on to his party to get more drink when he stabbed him twice during a drunken row in the early hours of July 20, 2010, in which a mother of two was also later stabbed and injured.
Belfast Recorder David McFarland told the 36-year-old Moane, of Lisolvan Park, Brookeborough, that he could not be certain he could keep his promise never to drink again, so it would be up to the Parole Board to decide if, and when, the father of five should be freed.
Judge McFarland said reports on Moane indicated that when sober he represented a minimum risk to the public, but with drink taken that risk was greatly inflated, and as such he regarded him as a posing a significant risk of danger to the public.
Originally charged with murdering the 36-year-old Lisnaskea father of one, his guilty plea to manslaughter was finally accepted on the basis he was suffering an abnormality of the mind, when he first attacked and stabbed Mr Woods twice in the chest, and then turned the knife on 37-year-old Kathleen McQuaid, at her Edenmore Road home in Tempo.
Moane, who also admitted threatening to kill another man, Damian Crudden, had been accused of attempting to murder Ms McQuaid, but this too was dropped when he pleaded to the lesser charge of wounding.
Prosecutor Margaret-Ann Dinsmore QC, had told the court that Moane, suffering from alcohol dependence syndrome, had met up with Mr Woods and a number of his friends drinking in the Stags Head bar in Lisnaskea.
Later that evening they decided to move on to a bar in Brookborough, but were refused entry, because it was late. It was at this stage an unpromptu party was set up in Ms McQuaid's Tempo home.
At one stage Moane and Mr Wood were alone in the kitchen and Ms McQuaid heard him plead: "Don't, don't, don't be doing that. ...'Ive got a seven-year-old daughter, don't be doing this".
When she went into the kitchen she found Mr. Woods, standing with blood coming from his T-shirt, who told her "I've been stabbed."
She later locked herself in her car, while Mr Crudden hid nearby, as Moane reportedly kept going in and out of the house, making threatening gestures and shouting: "come and see your friend now".
Moane later forced Ms McQuaid back into the kitchen, after smashing the car window with a vodka bottle. During a later struggle she two was stabbed twice, but despite her injuries, managed to escape and run to a neighbour's house.
As she did so Moane made off in her black Hyundai Getz, which police later forced off the road.
It was defence QC Eilis McDermott, who this week, revealled that up until meeting Mr Woods and his friends in the Main Street Lisnaskea bar, they'd been complete strangers to Moane.
Ms McDermott said it was Moane's simple total and sole desire to continue drinking which led him to latch on to Mr Woods and his friends.
The lawyer added that when the party arrived at Ms McQuaid's home, he "literally did not know where he was", and was only wanting to get a taxi and to ascertain where he was, when for some reason the drunken arguement broke out.
Ms McDermott said unfortunately, whatever happened, Moane picked up a knife from the sink and in an "alcohol induced frenzy" carried out the stabbings.
For this, Ms McDermott said Moane wished to publically apologise, realising that by his actions he had taken the llife of Mr Woods, something that could nver be put to right again.
Moane, she said, was now a man driven by remorse, who'd taken every opportunity in prison to turn his life around and has vowed never to drink again.
This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 14 Sep 12
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