Co Galway farmer Michael Scott has been jailed for six years for killing his aunt Chrissie Treacy by driving over her after failing to keep a proper look out while reversing an agricultural teleporter outside her home.
Ms Justice Caroline Biggs said that had the 59-year-old “thought about it at all” he would have realised the risk caused by him reversing the machine across the yard while his view was obstructed.
“He didn’t think of her at all – an elderly lady, his aunt, living alone,” the judge said, adding that Ms Treacy was entitled to feel safe outside her home.
She put Scott’s culpability higher than in a case of dangerous driving causing death.
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Scott, of Gortanumera, Portumna, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Treacy outside her home in Derryhiney, Portumna on April 27th, 2018. Following a trial earlier this year, a jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter on the basis of gross negligence.
Land dispute
The prosecution case was that Scott deliberately reversed over Ms Treacy following a long-running dispute over land. The trial heard that the HSE and Garda had been informed of concerns regarding Ms Treacy’s welfare due to her relationship with Scott.
The judge on Monday pointed to a number of lies Scott told gardaí after Ms Treacy’s death, when he said his relationship with his aunt had been “the finest” and they only ever argued over small things.
She said he also lied when he said that following the collision he heard Ms Treacy breathing, saw her moving, did not notice any injuries on her and did not think she would die.
Ms Justice Biggs said these were lies told for “self-preservation”. She said he showed little care for his aunt at that time and showed “no remorse” in the immediate aftermath of the killing. The judge accepted that Scott had more recently expressed genuine remorse and said reports from the probation services suggest he has insight into the impact the killing has had.
Scott had no previous convictions and the judge described him as a hard-working family man who was responsible in his business affairs. She noted that Scott has indicated that he accepts the jury’s manslaughter verdict.
Ms Treacy, the judge said, was “by all accounts a terrific lady, ahead of her time on farming knowledge and expertise and a boss in a house of men”.
Sense of humour
She recalled witnesses who had described Ms Treacy’s “wonderful Irish sense of humour” and her love of animals, in particular her dog Bradley, who went missing two months before her death.
Ms Treacy loved people, engaging with her neighbours and friends and “lived life to the fullest”, the judge said. She commended Ms Treacy’s community for the care and support they gave to her during her final years.
The judge set Scott’s headline sentence at eight years but reduced that to six years having taken into account the mitigating factors. Members of Scott’s family cried and comforted one another when the sentence was announced.
The jury was told that Ms Treacy and her brothers farmed about 140 acres at Derryhiney, and she owned another farm at nearby Kiltormer. Following the deaths of Ms Treacy’s brothers, Scott came to own half the land at Derryhiney and Ms Treacy owned the other half. She leased her land at Kiltormer and Derryhiney to Scott.
New lease
In early 2017, Scott did not bid to continue leasing the land from Ms Treacy in Kiltormer when it went up for auction. The court heard that by Christmas 2017, the deceased had made an application through her solicitor to split the land at Derryhiney and put a new lease on the half she owned.
On the day of Ms Treacy’s death, Scott received a letter from an agricultural consultant telling him not to claim payments for parcels of land on the farm he jointly owned with his aunt. He told gardaí he was not concerned about the letter and drove to the yard outside his aunt’s home to do some work on the farm.
He said he got into the teleporter and was reversing across the yard when he felt a “thump”. He said he thought he might have hit a trailer and moved the teleporter forward to level ground. He said that when he got down from the cabin he saw his aunt lying on the ground. He described her death as a tragic accident.