Woman sentenced to life for murdering four-year-old boy

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

A 32-year-old woman was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering her partner’s four-year-old son in Limerick in March 2021. She had changed her plea to guilty during her trial in November 2025. The court had adjourned the case for sentencing on December 1, 2025.

The judge also imposed four years and six months for two child-cruelty offences, to run concurrently with the life sentence. The woman can be named as Tegan McGhee after the court lifted the order preventing publication of her identity. The boy’s father, John Paul O’Connell, had previously been sentenced to seven years in prison for offences including endangerment, neglect and impeding McGhee’s apprehension or prosecution.