Thug beat grieving mum unconscious just hours after she learned son died in accident

Widower Patrick Sherlock was sentenced to just two years in prison for the attack and ordered to pay sister-in-law and victim Patricia McDonnell €12,000 in compensation after she told Judge Keenan Johnson she has forgiven him.

With time served and because of Patricia’s ‘remarkable compassion and forgiveness’, Sherlock (37) of St Paul’s Terrace, Athlone will be freed from prison in a little over three months’ time.

Woman who implored a judge not to jail her brute brother-in-law after he kicked her unconscious just hours after her son died, has said she didn’t want her nephews and niece to lose their father to prison

Courageous attack survivor Patricia, who was forced to miss her own son Martin’s funeral because of her injuries, told the Sunday World yesterday: “I didn’t want his children to suffer for what he did to me.

“I didn’t care about him – the only reason I did this was because he was married to my sister, Christina, and she is dead. I didn’t want those children to lose both their parents.

“Those four children have no mother and they’ve had no father since he was put in prison.

“She was a very good mother – she loved those children, loved them. As I said to the judge, maybe it was something she wanted me to do.

“We’ll never know that, but as far as I’m concerned I look at her pictures every day and it’s like she was telling me: ‘Give him a chance, just give him a chance.’

“A few days before the court I was asking myself what I should do.

“I wanted this man to go to jail. I can’t stand him – I hate him for what he did to me.

“I missed my child’s funeral because of him, everything was going through my head.

“But I decided to go the opposite way.

“Some people will say I’m too soft-hearted, and I can be.

“But I’ve a clear conscience about what I did in court; it was for them.

“I have no feelings for Paddy, but they need a father now, they need a parent in their life and I’ll get no satisfaction him being in prison.

“At the end of the day I did nothing to deserve what I got.”

Sickening footage of the attack, obtained by the Sunday World, shows Sherlock kicking an unconscious Patricia three times in the head during the incident at Iona Park, in the early hours of April 7, 2023.

As he kicks her, he can be heard screaming: “It’s coming to you, coming to you, always coming to you.”

During the course of the horrific attack, Patricia sustained a fractured eye socket, a broken jaw, a broken cheekbone, seven broken teeth and considerable facial bruising.

The court heard how the mechanic had consumed “four to five” pints and “two to three vodkas” before driving to Iona Park with his late wife’s niece at around 3:30am – a few hours after the family had learned that Patricia’s son Martin had been knocked down by a bus and killed.

A row broke out at the house, during which the niece falsely claimed that she had been stabbed by Patricia, leading to the attack by Sherlock.

“I got a phone-call from Athlone Gardaí the evening before this happened,” Patricia recalled

“They said my son Martin had been in an accident – he slipped off a path, the bus didn’t see him and he went straight under.

“After that I was up in my sister Maggie’s house.

“It was early the next morning when the knocks came at the door, a few bangs.

“A few people said he was in the house and that he was shouting about the bus driver.

“My sister went out and she was assaulted, so I went out and I asked why they’d do something like this the day my son died.

“There was no fighting or nothing but then my niece grabbed herself by the stomach and screamed ‘Paddy, she’s after stabbing me.’

“It was a pure lie … I’d done nothing.

“I could see Paddy in the car and then him coming for me and I just ran.

“I remember getting the first box to the face and then, thank God, I couldn’t feel anything after that.

“I’ve never seen the video but people said I was like a doll – my head was going side to side with the kicks.

“All my lower face was broken into pieces.

“I had two broken jaws, a broken chin, a broken eye socket, a broken cheek bone, seven teeth removed and he broke the bone underneath my teeth so those teeth are dying now.

“They will all go eventually.

“But I’m lucky because you can’t see any of what he did to me on the outside of my face.

“No matter how much kicking he gave me, my face never changed.

“I can’t smile like I used to, but I’ve no scars on my face.”

Patricia said when she woke up the next morning the doctors told her that her face had been very badly fractured.

“They said I’d have to be transferred to St James’s for an operation and I spent five hours being operated on to reconstruct my face.

“They put in three steel plates, in my jaws and in my chin, 16 screws and one steel plate in my cheekbone.

“I wasn’t in hospital that long because Martin’s funeral was meant to be that Tuesday and I was adamant I wanted to be at the funeral.

“The doctors didn’t want to sign me out for eight weeks because I had to be on a tube to get fed.

“But against the medical advice I told him I wanted to sign myself out and that’s what I done.

“But I got very sick when I got home and before I knew it Martin’s funeral was over and gone.

“It can be very hard to deal with that sometimes.

“I have good days and bad days like everyone else and I’m still on painkillers because my face still hurts me.

“But I’m alive.”

Imposing sentence on Thursday last, Judge Keenan Johnson said: “It was quite extraordinary to witness the level of compassion, magnanimity and forgiveness displayed by Ms. McDonnell.

He consequently sentenced Sherlock to five years in prison, suspending the final three years for a period of five years subject to a number of conditions.

Among them included orders for Sherlock to pay €12,000 in compensation to his victim, €3,000 of which was already handed into court; to secure employment within six months of his release and to enter into a peace bond for a period of five years in the wake of the completion of his sentence.

He ordered that the sentence be backdated to when Sherlock first went into custody on April 8 last year.

In doing so, Judge Johnson said that, while the sentence appeared lenient, it was one which had been made in the context of “exceptional circumstances” and one that could not be used as a precedent in case law for similar type cases in the future.