“He’d have been an Olympian this year” – Tracey Tully remembers Kevin Sheehy

The mother of murdered Limerick boxer Kevin Sheehy says the Olympic year of 2024 is a bittersweet one for his family.

Tracey Tully was reacting to news that Kevin’s killer Logan Jackson has received a 22-year sentence in the UK.

Logan Jackson of Coventry in the UK received a life sentence in December 2020 after he was convicted of the murder of 20 year old Kevin Sheehy in July 2019. 

Jackson had repeatedly run over the champion boxer in his Mitsubishi jeep following a verbal disagreement at a party celebrating Limerick’s Munster Hurling championship win. 

picture courtesty of Jamin Keogh

Tracey was told this week that Jackson was handed a sentence of 22 years at a UK hearing and was told he must serve 19 years and 192 days before he can apply for parole.

Speaking to Live 95 News she said she is relieved Jackson’s sentence is not a lenient one.

“I’m happy that it’s 22 years because he would have got 17 years here. And he won’t be out for parole for 19 years and he got it in another country. But it’s been a long journey”, Tracey Tully told Live 95 News.

“We’ve been through a horrendous trial still with the fear because I think his team were trying to get him out after seven years. It would have been devastating, my biggest fear. That was my fear from day one – that he was going to get a lighter sentence”, she said.

Tracey says her son had his eyes on 2024 as the year he would become an Olympian. It’s a bittersweet year for the family, a year that Kevin had his eye on in the months leading up to his death. The talented boxer was focused on achieving his life’s ambition of qualifying for the 2024 Olympic Games.

“He had this dream for the Olympics which was becoming a reality for him. He had it and believed in manifestation and he’d write it down everywhere. ‘2024 is my year’, he would say”, Tracey said. 

“So to get justice and this year alone, I feel this Kevin’s happy with that too”, she added.

Tracey says waiting for news on Logan Jackson’s sentence has been a very long and slow process with very little information coming her way. Tracey was just 42 when her nightmare began.

“I’m 47 now. My daughter was starting first year. She’s now graduated and my granddaughter who has never even met her daddy is starting school. And we’re still here, and  we never got a chance to celebrate his wonderful life”, she says. 

“We’ve been put through it by our own justice system as well which I feel has really left us down. We’re still waiting on an inquest five years later. It’s not finished for us, but at least I can push that man behind me now”.

Tracey says even though this year’s Paris Olympics will be bittersweet to watch but that she will still tune in. Kevin has a few of his friends taking part as well this year. 

“It would have been his dream. We could all see it happening for him. Everything Kevin ever did he excelled in”, Tracey says. 

“I’m getting a bit choked up now even even thinking about it because even up in his bedroom he has a carved out ‘2024’. He believed that it was to be his year, he was primed and ready. Kevin was an absolutely amazing young man, and I’m very proud that I am his mother and that I knew him”.

Tracey says she was sent a photograph from some friends who were with Kevin on the day he died. Kevin and his friends were celebrating the Limerick match on the day his life was taken.

“I heard lovely stories of how they laughed all day and that it was such a fun day. To see that photo of him so alive and happy – I know that he had just won his champion match in Hull and he was out for the match”, she says.

“He was taking a six-week break and then they were going full-on then for training for the Olympics. Just to see that photo after five years, it’s bittersweet”.

Tracey says she gets some solace knowing he had such a lovely day and was around good people.

“He was in the best company. I could rest and go to sleep that night. And then to be woken at that horrendous time in the morning to be told that news. It never leaves you. To me its as if my son died yesterday”, Tracey said.