A Fermanagh boxer has been jailed for assaulting two senior businessmen at a Cavan filling station two-years-ago.
Inspired, his legal team suggest, by the sacking of his dad the day before, James Bernard McGovern (24) broke businessman Kevin Lunney’s nose and left him with potentially lasting damage to one eye.
McGovern, otherwise known as Bernard McGovern, pleaded guilty this month to assaulting the Mannok chief operating officer, causing him harm at Rakeelan filling station, near Ballyconnell, on February 1, 2019.
He also pleaded to a lesser charge of assaulting Dara O’Reilly, chief financial officer at the same enterprise, businesses once founded by ex-tycoon Sean Quinn Sr.
McGovern has been sentenced to three years and three months for assaulting Mr Lunney, and five months to be served concurrently for the attack on Mr O’Reilly.
McGovern, with an address at Springtown Road, Kinawley, first threw a cup of scalding tea in Mr O’Reilly’s face before hitting Mr Lunney up to seven or eight times, knocking him to the floor, Cavan Circuit Court was told.
Evidence was the attack occurred the day after McGovern’s father Séan had his employment as a truck driver with Quinn Industrial Holdings, rebranded as Mannok, terminated.
For clarity, it was stated to the court that McGovern had no involvement in incidents in September 2019, when Mr Lunney was abducted near his Fermanagh home and his tortured body dumped on a rural Cavan backroad.
Judge John Aylmer described the attacks as being at the “upper end” of scale of such offending.
He also described the attack as “callous” and “premeditated”.