‘Verdict I wanted’ says Eddie Meenan’s mother

Nancy Meenan said she and her family received a degree of closure on Tuesday when a jury found Sean Rodgers (34), of no fixed abode, guilty of Mr. Meenan’s murder, and Ryan Walters (22), of Crossgar, guilty of his manslaughter.

A third man, Derek Creswell (29) of King’s Lane in Ballykelly, had already pleaded guilty to Mr. Meenan’s murder.

All three now face jail sentences.

Speaking to the ‘Journal’ yesterday Mrs. Meenan said: “It is immaterial to me whether they get ten years, twenty years, forty years...it will never bring Eddie back. Though I got the verdict that I wanted.

“I wouldn’t even want an apology from them. It wouldn’t mean anything. It will never bring Eddie back. But I can’t go through life hating them because hate eats away at you. I know if I hate them I’m only doing more damage to myself. But the man above will judge them.”

Nancy’s son was aged 52 when he was viciously assaulted at Thundering Down between Creggan Street and Bull Park on November 25, 2018.

The father-of-nine was stabbed 52 times and beaten so badly he suffered two broken legs and over a hundred sites of assault were marked on his body.

His sister Tanya said the guilty verdicts this week have provided some solace to the Meenan family.

“There is some kind of closure that they have been found guilty,” says Tanya. “But it was mentally and physically draining. Even to this day I have nightmares and they are all about knives. It’s changed everyone in the family.

“We’ll never be the same as we were before. It’s something we’ll never, ever get over.”

After the guilty verdicts were delivered this week Judge Donna McColgan thanked the jury which she described as ‘the most attentive I have ever come across’.

She excused them from jury service for the rest of their lives.

She told Rodgers that there was only one sentence she could pass and that was a life sentence and that a tariff hearing will be held at a later date to determine the minimum he will serve.

She told him to get a solicitor before that hearing.

The case will be reviewed next Wednesday, March 23.

Eddie Meenan’s brother Terry told the ‘Journal’ he finds it difficult to find comfort in the guilty verdicts handed down to two men for the killing this week.

The brutal murder of Mr. Meenan in Thundering Down on November 25, 2018, had robbed Terry of the opportunity to rekindle a relationship with Eddie.

“I’d been out of Derry for 32 years. This has denied me an opportunity to have a brotherly relationship with Eddie again. I was working in Dublin so it’s denied me that.

“He didn’t deserve to die like that. No way. It’s like a nightmare. When I was in that court sitting there you felt like they were talking about someone else.

“That’s the way it felt to me. It was as if you were sitting there listening to a case that doesn’t concern you.”

Terry recalls Eddie simply as ‘a character’: “It’s the only way I can describe him.”

He credits Eddie with saving his life in one of his final acts before he was murdered three-and-a-half years ago.

“Eddie probably saved my life because previous to the Saturday when he was murdered I had suffered a silent heart attack on the Sunday and I didn’t know it.

“That Tuesday my mum asked me to come up and move a mattress into Eddie’s room because Eddie had a bad arm and a bad leg. I was going up the stairs and felt a bit nauseous. So I stopped and said, ‘Listen, I don’t feel well at all’. Eddie was insistent that I go to the hospital as a precaution.

“I went over to the hospital and they did their tests and discovered it was a problem with my heart.

“That was on the Tuesday. By the Wednesday I had a stent in at Altnagelvin. I got out on the Thursday and Eddie was murdered on the Saturday.”