Donegal man acquitted after claiming he bit rival in self-defence - Donegal Daily

A Donegal man has been acquitted of seriously assaulting another man having been accused of biting a part of an ear off.Owen McDonagh was found not guilty after...

A Donegal man has been acquitted of seriously assaulting another man having been accused of biting a part of an ear off.

Owen McDonagh was found not guilty after his legal team argued that the accused man was entitled to self defence.

After a trial lasting three days at Letterkenny Circuit Court, a jury of seven men and five women took around 40 minutes to find McDonagh not guilty of an offence of assault causing harm to Tom Ward. The verdict was a unanimous one.

Unruly scenes erupted between the two men, both members of the Travelling community, at Castle Park, Letterkenny, on December 28, 2022.

McDonagh, a 31-year-old of The Big Isle, Manorcunningham, was charged with assaulting Tom Ward and causing him harm, an offence contrary to section 3 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997. A charge of making a threat to kill, contrary to section 5 of the same act, was withdrawn during the trial due to an evidential issue.

Barrister for McDonagh, Mr Brian McCartney SC, with Damien Halleron BL, instructed by solicitor Mr Oliver Roche, contested that is client had been cut by a knife brandished by Mr Ward during a scuffle.

“While one man was armed with a knife, the other man was armed with only his fists,” Mr McCartney said. “He learnt forward and bit him back.”

Mr Ward, who is now 25, told Barrister for the State Ms Fiona Crawford BL that he was at home with his wife, who was pregnant at the time, and several other people were at the property.

He said he could recall someone shouting: “There’s two of them” and said he was “in a lot of fear”.

Mr Ward told how McDonagh was at his front door with his hands in a boxing position and shouting aggressively.

“He came to the front door saying: ‘I’ll kill ya’,” Mr Ward told the court. “And he was acting aggressively. I was at the front door, yes, simply to try to protect my pregnant wife, the vulnerable, the old and the young”.

Mr Ward confirmed that he produced a kitchen knife in what he said was an attempt to try to “scare him (McDonagh) away”. He said that when he dropped the knife, McDonagh “got on top of me and I was struggling to breathe”.

Mr Ward said McDonagh began to punch him and when he got off the ground the accused man bit his left ear.

He subsequently ran and McDonagh came after him. He described how McDonagh “grabbed the area he bit and pulled it harshly”. Mr Ward alleged that McDonagh “was repeatedly punching me”. McDonagh, Mr Ward added, then bit his right ear and “a piece came clean off”. He said he was “very dizzy” and blood was coming down his face onto his clothing.

Mr Ward said that he grabbed another article, a machete, and “hit the car a few times” as McDonagh was reversing the car. He said he did this “to try and protect with reasonable force”.

In 2024 at Letterkenny District Court, Mr Ward was given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, for the production of the machete in the same incident.

Gardai and ambulance personnel arrived at the scene and Mr Ward had to be transferred to Galway University Hospital for his injuries to be treated.

Under cross examination from Mr McCartney, Mr Ward said that his brother had a bare knuckle fight with McDonagh and he believed that “this was a revenge attack for the outcome of the fight”.

Mr Ward said he had gone for the knife with the intention of “scaring a violent man from my home”. He said: “Two men showed up at my house. One was weaponised already; he is a trained bare knuckle fighter. I was scared.”

Mr Ward denied that he attempted to “taunt” McDonagh and added: “My intention was to protect, his intention was to harm.”

Mr McCartney put it to the witness that he was “deceptive; a sort of a cute boy, dishonest when you have to be” and Mr Ward replied: “That’s what you think”.

Mr Ward told the court that McDonagh had been engaged in social media activity about him and he had subsequently blocked the accused man on some apps. “He had a personal grudge,” Mr Ward said.

When the barrister put it to Mr Ward that he had “dressed it up as a lie” and “dressed it up with a load of nonsense”, the witness replied: “I have no reason to lie”. He added: “I know that you’re here to discredit me”.

Ms Annie Ward, the wife of Mr Ward, recalled how she was six months pregnant at the time of the incident. She told how her husband got “freaked out” and she saw a piece of his right ear missing and “there was blood everywhere”.

Ms Ward told Mr McCartney that her husband has been suffering from a lot of depression since the incident and said: “It’s not the scars on the outside, it’s the ones inside that have damaged a lot.”

After fearing for her baby’s health, Ms Ward was taken for a scan on the same day. Pressed by the barrister why McDonagh had shown up to her home, Ms Ward said: “I really don’t know why Owen came to attack Tom.”

The court heard that an allegation of a personal nature had been made prior to the incident.

Detective Garda Eimear Hassett told the court that she had her colleague, Garda Shane Walsh, attended the scene after 10am following a report of an assault.

Detective Garda Hassett said Mr Ward was sitting on a kitchen chair with two lacerations to both of his ears and he appeared to be missing a part of his right ear. Mr Ward reported that he had been attacked and he then started to feel quite unwell, became faint and began to vomit.

The detective Garda said there were several people at the scene, including children. A short time later, the Gardai located a piece of human flesh, a segment from Mr Ward’s ear, on the tarmac of the public road outside the property. This was placed in a container and transported to hospital.

When put in the witness box by his own defence team, McDonagh told the court that Mr Ward had “come at me with a knife” and said he “hit Tom a box to stop him stabbing me with the knife”.

In what he referred to as an ensuing “rough and tumble”, McDonagh said he was bitten by Mr Ward and he bit him back.

“I realised that this man wanted to kill me, I was in fear of my life,” McDonagh said.

Under cross examination from Ms Crawford, McDonagh said he was invited to the property and said he initially attempted to speak to Mr Ward.

“I wanted to fight and sort the matter out,” McDonagh said. “We could have had a bare knuckle fight to sort the matter out.”

Ms Crawford suggested that McDonagh could simply have left the property, but the accused man replied: “In our tradition, when you are asked for a bare knuckle fight, you fight to sort the problem out.”

Ms Crawford said that McDonagh was in a boxing stance within five steps “like the Fighting Irish sign” and McDonagh told the jury that he was “in fear” and had heard Mr Ward say that he was going to his car to retrieve a bigger knife.

Asked by Ms Crawford if he had bitten Mr Ward on the right ear, McDonagh responded: “That’s right.”

He added: “At that moment in time, I was in fear of this man. I was trying my hardest to stop this man from killing me.”

In her closing remarks, Ms Crawford told the jury that the right to defend oneself was not a right to continue using violence “when such actions are no longer necessary. Ms Crawford implored jury members to view the footage and to consider the force used and the circumstances immediately before the incident as well as the degree of force and the manner in which it was delivered.

“At no time was Mr Ward the aggressor,” Ms Crawford said, adding that McDonagh had escalated the physical encounter.

The prosecuting barrister said: “The evidence establishes that Owen McDonagh’s actions went well beyond what was reasonable.”

Mr McCartney, in his closing remarks to the jury, highlighted the presence of the knife in Mr Ward’s hand. When the knife was removed from him, he went to get the machete “to finish off his intentions - to inflict fatal or serious injury”, Mr McCartney said.

He said that the burden of proof in a criminal case - beyond reasonable doubt - was “a very high bar” and told jurors that they had to ask if McDonagh was entitled to defend himself against Mr Ward, who admitted that he had a knife in the yard.

“He suffered a knife wound, he was bitten and he defendant himself,” Mr McCartney said, adding that the video footage was “consistent with the entitlement to self defence”.

He added that that his client’s sole mistake was accepting an invitation to fight and asked the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.