Around Ireland Evil daddy in Dublin

By Patrick Markey

A Dubliner who used his 2 1/2-year-old son as an ashtray and stubbed a cigarette out on his tongue while severely assaulting him has been jailed for three years by a Dublin judge.

The Examiner newspaper reported recently that Mark Duggan, 24, of North Strand pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm.

Garda Lorraine Travers told the court that the incident happened in the early hours of the morning at Duggan’s ex-girlfriend’s house.

The girlfriend had fallen asleep along with the couple’s 7-month-old daughter in a carriage beside her. When she woke, Duggan had left the house. She went upstairs to check on her son and found him hiding under the bed covers. The young boy had a cigarette burn on his tongue and severe bruising to his left eye and across his right cheek.

Bruising was also found on the back of his head, his lower back and his penis. Multiple small bruises were also found on his thighs and legs.

Garda said the woman locked the back door and moved their daughter upstairs when Duggan returned. He started banging on the door and roaring for her to let him inside.

Duggan managed to gain entry after he threw a brick through a glass in the door. He remained in the house and slept on the couch in the sitting room while she reported the matter to gardaí the following morning.

Piece of cake

Sports is a piece of cake for Armagh and Down football fans — literally.

Fans of both teams got into a unique showdown ahead of last Sunday’s Ulster Senior Football Final, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

Shoppers at Dunnes Stores in Newry were vying to snap up as many cakes baked in the colors of the rival GAA teams as they could. Graham’s Cakes company has baked 300 of each and the battle to sell out first proved to be fierce.

"They are selling like the proverbial hotcakes, but at the moment it’s neck and neck," said the manager of the store where the odd confrontation took place.

"The town itself is pretty evenly split between Armagh and Down fans, so it could go either way," he said before the match.

Fighting for justice

A Belfast man jailed almost 50 years ago for killing a judge’s daughter in one of Northern Ireland’s most notorious murders has won the first round of his battle to clear his name.

Investigators from the Criminal Cases Review Commission are examining the case of former RAF airman Iain Hay Gordon, who was found guilty, but insane of the 1953 fatal stabbing of Patricia Curran, according to the Examiner.

Curran was stabbed 37 times at her family home. Her father was Justice Lancelot Curran, a prominent Stormont Unionist.

The Birmingham based Commission, which investigates suspected miscarriages of justice, has visited the scene of the murder at Whiteabby near Belfast. They will also transport six crates of files on the Curran case from the RUC’s disclosure unit to Birmingham.

Gordon, now 67, has always proclaimed his innocence. He was detained in Holywell Mental Hospital before his release in 1960.