Irish women who killed her fiancé could be released from prison after just 3 years

An Irish woman who killed her fiancé in Australia in 2017 is expected to be released on parole early next year.

Cathrina ‘Tina’ Cahill from County Wexford was jailed in 2018 after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of David Walsh.

She stabbed him following a row at their home in Sydney in the early hours of February 18, 2017.

She pleaded guilty to manslaughter based on substantial impairment due to an abnormality of the mind.

Justice Peter Johnson, of New South Wales Supreme Court, sentenced her to eight years in jail, with a non-parole period of five years.

When Justice Johnson handed down the sentence, he said he was “not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offender intended to kill Mr. Walsh”.

Judge Johnson described the relationship as “volatile” and one “marked by incidents of violence on both sides of the relationship”.

James Trevallion, the lawyer who represented her, told the Irish Independent he expects she will be released on parole in a matter of months.

“Tina will likely be released to parole on February 18, 2022. I expect she will be then held in immigration detention and deported [back to Ireland] soon after, but I don’t know exactly how long that process will take,” he said.

Violent Relationship 

Ms. Cahill and Mr. Walsh got engaged on New Year's Eve but their relationship was violent and turbulent. 

At the time of the trial, Ms. Cahill was on a good behavior bond and the subject of an apprehended violence order issued to protect Mr. Walsh, after she was convicted of recklessly wounding him with a glass candle holder in 2015.

The court heard that on the night of the stabbing, Cahill had returned from a night out with two female housemates and had invited back a man after meeting him at a pub.

Mr. Walsh, who had also been drinking, was asleep on the couch, woke up and believed the man was there with his fiancée.

He started to repeatedly punch him and Ms. Cahill intervened, before taking out a “large, very sharp” knife from the cutlery drawer and stabbing him in the neck.

Police and paramedics were called, but Mr. Walsh was pronounced dead at the scene.

Judge Johnson found Mr. Walsh used “controlling conduct, verbal abuse and demeaning language towards Ms. Cahill, who responded with the use of violence, including the use of weapons, usually at times when both were intoxicated”.