Teen said Cameron was one of nicest people at the party

By ALISON O’RIORDAN

A TEENAGE boy held a knife high above his head and pointed it at party-goers outside a house in Cork city where 20-year-old college student Cameron Blair was murdered, the Central Criminal Court was told.

The court also heard during the sentence hearing that the now 19-year-old accused had pulled up his top, revealing his waistband, when his 14-year-old friend told him: ‘Give it to me, I’ll shank one of them.’

Evidence was also given that the defendant told gardaí that he had earlier picked up the knife from the kitchen floor of the house ‘to scare’ the others at the party, but said he had no intention of using it.

Scott O’Connor, of Churchfield Square, Churchfield, Cork pleaded guilty last January to committing violent disorder at Bandon Road in Cork on January 16th, 2020. He has also pleaded guilty to producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury in the course of a dispute, to wit a knife, in a manner likely unlawfully to intimidate another person on the same occasion.

Cameron was a native of Ballinascarthy and a second-year chemical engineering student at Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). He died at CUH on January 16th, 2020 after being stabbed in the neck while attending a student house party. In April 2020, a boy then aged 17, who murdered Cameron by plunging a knife into his neck, received a life sentence that will be reviewed in 2032.

A probation report was made available to the court in which O’Connor said he will always regret the circumstances of that evening and that Cameron was one of the nicest people at the party.

Mr Justice David Keane remanded the defendant on continuing bail until July 5th, when he will be sentenced.

On June 16th, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) discontinued the charge against a third defendant, a teenage boy accused of producing a knife during a dispute at the house party. He had been on trial at the Central Criminal Court for almost three weeks before the case ended.

Before the State opened its case in May, the boy pleaded guilty to committing violent disorder with two other persons present together, using or threatening to use unlawful violence, and such conduct taken together would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at Bandon Road in Cork city to fear for his or another person’s safety at the said place on the same occasion.

The juvenile was remanded on continuing bail until July 12th.