New Age Travellers plead guilty to manslaughter
Three new age travellers on trial for the murder of a man on a mountainside in Leitrim in 1998 have had pleas of manslaughter accepted by the DPP.
The three will now face sentencing for manslaughter in October. They are alleged to have confronted a man who they wanted to leave their campsite and beaten him so severely that he died from his injuries. A pickaxe and an iron bar were used in the attack.
Andrew Gordon Roche, aged 36, with an address in Drumlease, Dromohair, Co. Leitrim, Martin Francis Barber, aged 33, with an address at Boihy, Manorhamilton and Keith Cooper, aged 25, with an address at Gortimar, Manorhamilton were all due to go on trial for the murder of Elliott Colin Double, otherwise known as Elliott Robertson, at a new age traveller campsite on the mountainside at Boihy, Co Leitrim on October 6, 1998.
Earlier this week, Barber changed his plea to manslaughter and today, Roche and Cooper followed. When they were re-arraigned before a Central Criminal Court jury, they pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty of manslaughter.
Mr George Birmingham SC, prosecuting, told the court that the pleas were acceptable to the DPP.
The court has heard that the killing occurred when the three new age travellers became involved in a confrontation with the deceased on a mountain path. Robertson, who had previous convictions for assault and was the subject of a protection order taken out by his partner, brandished a spade during the row. The three accused then attacked him and beat him to the ground, using a pickaxe and an iron bar. They then bound Mr Robertson and continued to beat him.
A post-mortem showed multiple blows that delivered blunt force trauma to the body and later caused cardiac arrest.
Robertson was then dragged by the rope that bound his hands along a rough gravel path to a caravan, where the three accused told its occupants to call an ambulance and said the injured man should consider himself lucky to be alive.
The court heard that the incident arose from a dispute between long-term new age travellers, who had put down roots at Boihy, and casual travellers or passers-by, who had arrived at the site.
The new age travellers, some of whom had children, were concerned that the new arrivals were involved in crime in the local area, including burglaries, were dumping rubbish and drug syringes around the campsite, and were driving at high speeds up and down the mountain lanes.
The deceased, Mr Robertson, a native of Glasgow, was one of the casual travellers. Tensions between the two groups grew in the days before the killing and on the night of October 5, there was a gathering of some of "the casuals" in the caravan to where Mr Robertson was eventually dragged.
