Gerard Dowling pleads not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Gerard Dowling pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the attempted murder of Simon Burke, assaulting him causing harm and producing a knife.

The charges arose from an incident at Market Cross Shopping Centre in Kilkenny on 13 July 2016. The trial began before Justice Paul McDermott and a jury on 23 October 2017 and was continuing. The proceedings were reported on 24 October 2017.

Dowling told gardaí that, on the morning of the assault, he went to the Department of Psychiatry at St Luke’s Hospital because he felt paranoid and was hearing voices. He said he did not get to speak to anyone because they seemed busy. Garda Amie Ryan told prosecuting counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley SC that CCTV showed Dowling entering the hospital at 10.08am and leaving at 10.22am.

Dowling told gardaí that after leaving the hospital he attacked a man with a knife he had bought weeks earlier. He said he did not know Burke, who had done nothing to him, and that he had stopped taking his medication the previous January. Asked whether he was trying to kill Burke, he said it was hard to know; he also said he had not carried the knife as an offensive weapon and that his condition made it hard to know what he was trying to do.

On 23 October, Vaughan Buckley told the jury that forensic psychiatrists for the prosecution and defence agreed Dowling had been suffering from a mental illness at the time of the alleged assault and met the criteria for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.