Manslaughter sentencing of Dave Mahon, stepfather of missing Amy Fitzpatrick, deferred

UPDATE: The court in Dublin has sentenced Dave Mahon to seven years imprisonment for the manslaughrter of his stepson Dean Fitzpatrick.

THE sentencing of Dave Mahon, convicted of the manslaughter of missing Irish girl Amy Fitzpatrick’s brother, and husband to her mother, has been deferred to Monday June 13. 

Earlier this month a jury found the 45-year-old guilty of killing Dean Fitzpatrick, his stepson, during an argument between two in May 2013. 

The prosecution had charged Mr Mahon with murder, alleging that he was drunk and angry when he pulled a knife on the 23-year-old, who suffered a single stab wound to the stomach outside his mother’s apartment in Malahide, near Dublin. 

In his defence Mahon’s legal team argued that Mr Fitzpatrick had walked onto the knife, an account not disputed by the forensics team, and ultimately accepted by the jury, who took just over eight hours to find him guilty of manslaughter and not murder. 

Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in Ireland but it is highly unlikely that Mahon will serve that, although a significant prison term is to be expected when the court reconvenes a week on Monday. 

Dean’s mother Audrey, Mr Mahon’s partner, said that she had ‘forgiven Dave’ but ‘not forgotten’ what had happened, saying that her husband had done everything he could to help her find her missing daughter. 

Amy Fitzpatrick went missing from Mijas Costa on Spain’s Costa del Sol on New Year’s Day 2008, aged just 15, and her case has continued to trouble detectives, with Audrey returning frequently to Spain to carry on the search. 

Christopher Fitzpatrick, father to both Amy and Dean, said in his victim impact statement “I thought Amy’s disappearance was the worst thing that would happen in my life.

“In 2013 my world came crashing down once again.”