An attacker who travelled to Dublin city centre with “a plan to hunt someone” before randomly plunging a knife through the neck of a grandmother who had come to see the Christmas lights has been jailed for 12 years.
Gretta McCullough (64) was walking with her husband when without warning she was struck violently from behind with the blade of the seven-inch knife by Darragh Quigley (26), a schizophrenic man who had stopped taking his medication.
Mr Justice Paul Burns said on Monday that this was a “totally unprovoked” attack, where the knife had gone “right through” the neck of the middle-aged woman but “miraculously missed all crucial structures”. He said the attack had robbed the victim of her independence and confidence and left her with a persistent underlying vulnerability.
Attempted murder, the judge continued, is “a most grave” offence and there is often some fortuitous circumstance that saves the victim from death and injury. “This is such a case,” he added.
The judge said there was an element of planning involved, as the defendant Darragh Quigley (26) had armed himself with a large knife and travelled to the city centre before deliberately attacking Ms McCullough from behind.
He said the defendant’s intention was to kill and that he had “plunged” the knife into the victim’s neck “in such a fashion that it protruded out the other side”.
Last month, Ms McCullough said in her victim impact statement that the impact felt like a brick being smashed into the back of her head and she had “no time to react, no opportunity to defend myself and no understanding at first of what happened”.
She added: “Almost immediately I became aware of an unnatural and deeply distressing sensation as a knife penetrated the back of my head on one side and exited through the other. The blade passed through the back of my head”.
Handing down sentence today, Mr Justice Burns said the defendant had gone into town with a knife and a plan to hunt someone. When officers asked him why “that woman”, Quigley replied: “I didn’t know her face, her story, I didn’t know anything about her, it was purely random”.
The judge noted however that Quigley also told officers he felt disgusted about what he had done and had genuine remorse for doing it.
Mr Justice Burns said that CCTV footage retrieved from the area showed Quigley had followed the couple for a number of minutes in the city centre before carrying out this “totally unprovoked attack”.
Quigley of Carndonagh Road, Donaghmede, north Dublin had pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Ms McCullough (64) on November 16th, 2023, at Chatham Row, Dublin 2.
The judge said during Monday’s sentence hearing that Ms McCullough and her husband had returned to Ireland six months prior to the offence and were walking around the South William Street area when the defendant came from behind and “plunged” a bread knife into the victim’s neck.
He said the knife “remained in situ” and the victim’s husband had confronted Quigley, who fled the scene. He said Ms McCullough soon became aware there was a knife in the back of her neck and pulled it out.
Mr Justice Burns said a UK-based psychiatrist found that Quigley had a significant history of involvement in mental health units since his teenage years and was diagnosed in 2023 with suffering from drug-induced psychosis.
He said the psychiatrist also found the defendant has schizophrenia and was actively psychotic at the time of the offence.
However, the judge said the expert witness had also concluded that Quigley did not meet the legal criteria to support a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity and that the defendant could distinguish right from wrong.
The judge said Quigley had significant mental health issues and that cannabis abuse was a contributory factor, although there was no evidence he was intoxicated at the time of the offending. He said the defendant had discontinued adhering to his mental health treatment regime and the psychiatrist found Quigley could have restrained himself from committing the act.
Mr Justice Burns set the headline sentence at 14 years and six months imprisonment.
In mitigation, Mr Justice Burns noted the guilty plea and that a letter of remorse had been handed into the court.
The judge sentenced Quigley to 13 years in prison with the final year suspended for a period of five years. He said it would be a matter of medical opinion whether the defendant needs to be treated in a secure medical facility upon his release, but he recommended that a psychiatric assessment be carried out two months prior to his release.
The sentence was backdated to November 17th, 2023.
Quigley, the court previously heard, has no previous convictions but had come to garda attention on a number of occasions for mental health issues.
The court previously heard that Quigley, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had ceased to comply with his medication regime at the time of the offence, told gardaí in interviews that he had gone into town with a knife “with a plan of hunting someone and had to follow through”.
In her statement, Ms McCullough described the “random” attack as “silent, sudden and terrifying”. “I did not see my attacker. I did not provoke the attack. I was simply walking with my husband,” she added.
Still in shock and “not fully comprehending the severity” of her injuries, the victim said she removed the knife herself and handed it to her husband, telling him she had been stabbed.
Ms McCullough said the defendant had initially attempted to retrieve the knife, which was “firmly embedded” in her head, but then ran away.
The woman said in her statement that the violent attack has: “permanently altered my sense of safety, my independence and my understanding of my own mortality.”
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