A disqualified Pettigo farmer who killed his brother in a hit and run five years ago has been jailed for six months and banned from driving for five years.

Pat McCafferty, who was 49, died after he was hit by a car on the Tullychurry Road outside the Fermanagh, Donegal Border town of Belleek in the early hours of January 5, 2014.

Behind the wheel of the blue Ford Focus car was his 45-year-old younger brother Francis McCafferty from Grout Hall, Laghey in Co Donegal, who admitted causing death by careless driving, and driving while disqualified and uninsured.

Last Friday Judge Stephen Fowler QC acknowledged that the distress and hurt caused by the “tragic death” had been immense, but also that “no term of months or years imposed” could reconcile a family to their loss, “nor will it cure their anguish”.

Last week prosecution QC Ciaran Murphy explained that McCafferty had been given his brother and others a lift home, but that they argued, as they often did.

However, although he drove away, he returned a short time later, and as Mr. Murphy claimed, drove into the area where he would have known Pat and the other pedestrians were present.

Then having driven into his brother Pat who’d been standing in the middle of the road, throwing him into the air, McCafferty fled and “subsequently engaged in a charade as to what had happened”.

Although Gardai, who later found the car, initially arrested him on suspicion of murder he denied being involved, telling Gardai: “I didn’t hit him. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t driving the car.”

Two days later he gave a statement in which he admitted being the driver but claimed it was an accident.

He said he had been driving at 30mph when “he (Pat) ran straight out. I just hit him. I didn’t think anything was wrong.”

He was arrested by the PSNI in 2018 and made denials and no comment replies during the course of six interviews.

Mr. Murphy said while experts estimated McCafferty had been driving at “a relatively slow speed”, it was on “a narrow county road where he knew there were pedrestrians present, who had consumed alcohol .... and a real risk of colliding with them as he is driving within the limits of his headlights on a dark night”.

“His grossly irresponsible behaviour in leaving the scene and the charade in which he engaged in relation to the vehicle are aggravating features,” added the lawyer.

Defence QC James Gallagher said it was estimated that the father of two and carer for his elderly mother, would have been “left about half a second” to avoid his brother, dressed in black... “who regrettably was highly intoxicated” when he took the “rash” decision to step into the middle of the road in an attempt to stop his car.

Mr. Gallagher said that initially a “remorseful and sad” McCafferty couldn’t accept what he had done, “given the enormity of what occured and the fact it was his brother”. Counsel said that the “essence” of the case was that McCafferty should have taken “greater control” of his driving, but had not. And that on “a dark unlighted country road, a driver, not driving at any great speed, is confronted unfortunately by a person who came out in front of him”.