Farmer snapped after 30 years of listening to neighbour’s machine

After what he said was 30 years of listening to the shotgun-like sounds of the crow banger, 63-year-old north Kerry farmer Michael Ferris said he just snapped and drove the forks of his teleporter through the window of a neighbour’s car, as “it was no good talking to him”.

Ferris said there was no other way to stop John Anthony O’Mahony from using the loud crow banger.

Yesterday, the jury in the trial at the Central Criminal Court in Tralee found Ferris not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.

The seven men and five women had been deliberating overall for four hours 31 minutes.

However, 10 minutes after being told they could bring in a majority verdict, a decision was reached by a majority of 10 to two.

Ferris, a dairy farmer, of Rattoo, Ballyduff, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr O’Mahony, a tillage farmer, aged 73, of Ardoughter, Ballyduff, at Rattoo at around 8am on April 4 last year.

The prosecution argued that the killing had been deliberate and intentional and pressed for a murder conviction.

However, the defence had argued there had been accumulated provocation because of the behaviour of Mr O’Mahony, and the fair and just verdict would be manslaughter.

Defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC said in his closing speech that he made no apology for speaking ill of the dead, which was not a normal thing to do. However, it was to show why Michael Ferris — “a good man who did a bad thing” — did what he did.

Mr O’Mahony’s family shook their heads and cried as the verdict was read out.

The intense trial was in its eighth day.

Mr Grehan had put forward a defence of what the judge in her charge to the jury described as “cumulative provocation”.

Ferris told gardaí he set out on the morning of April 4, 2017 and parked his teleporter, an industrial-type machine normally used in construction which had two large prongs at the front, across the road to block Mr O’Mahony’s car.

He went away and did a few jobs and when he heard the hooting on the laneway, he knew “it was Mahony”.

He got back into the teleporter and drove the prongs of the machine through the windscreen of the car.

The trial was told the car had been lifted “clear off the ground” and dropped a number of times, that the huge forks of the teleporter had been driven in and out through the body of Mr O’Mahony and through the car a number of times, and that some of the piercings on the bonnet and the roof had blood stains.

State pathologist Margot Bolster spent an hour detailing the catastrophic and horrific injuries to a silent courtroom on the third day of the trial.

There were gaping holes in the car and Mr O’Mahony’s body — still strapped into the car, the seat belt partially torn by the prong — had gaping wounds.

His lacerated and pulped liver was found in the footwell of the car. His heart had been “evulsed”, or ripped out, and was between the seat and the door.

Every part of Mr O’Mahony’s body had been torn and ripped apart by the giant prongs, which had penetrated his body at least five times, and gone right through twice.

When detectives from Tralee arrived, Ferris told them: “I’ll tell ye what happened.”

In a memo read to the court, he said: “Anthony Mahony was going to be coming down the road with a crow banger. There is always a problem with him for years.”

Ferris said the crow banger would “wake the dead”.

“I spoke to him years ago about it,” he told gardaí. “Today, I blocked the road with a teleporter to stop him coming down. I parked it sideways. He started hooting. I was not in the teleporter. I sat up on the teleporter. I did not talk to him. No good talking to him.

“The pallet forks I had on it, I made for the car and drove into it.”

A number of witnesses told of difficulties with Mr O’Mahony in relation to the crow banger, which had been moved near the houses on the laneway five years previously, having initially stood in the middle of the fields.

Another neighbour, Patrick Walsh, told the court the crow banger would be used during daylight hours, going off every four minutes and 26 seconds between April and October.

It was so bad the Walshs had to wear ear protection.

The trial was told Mr O’Mahony had had run-ins with the law and had shot at and threatened a number of people.

Ms Justice Carmel Stewart thanked the jury, saying it had not been an easy trial and they could be excused from jury duty for 10 years.

Sentencing will be at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin on November 26.