Man found guilty of murder of Cork postman Barry Daly

Olivia Kelleher

A 21-year-old man has been found guilty of the murder of a postman who was found with a pool of blood under his head in the driveway of his home in Doneraile, Co Cork, last year.

A jury at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork has convicted Alex Deady of Glenview, Convent Road in Doneraile of the murder of 44-year-old Barry Daly.

The jury had deliberated on their verdict for 11 hours and 51 minutes.

Daly was found injured outside his home in Rockview Terrace on October 12th, 2025. Despite medical intervention, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The evidence in the trial was that a broken head of a golf club was discovered in the garden of the deceased.

The jury heard that Daly died of catastrophic head and facial injuries, which were inflicted with a golf club.

Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margot Bolster, said that Daly’s jaw was broken into fragments and dislocated from where it attaches to the skull on the left side.

She stated that this “would have caused an awful lot of bleeding that would have been inhaled into the lungs.”

“All of these fractures of your mouth, and blood – you cannot get air into your lungs and without oxygen you die.”

There were no offensive or defensive wounds. An organ donor card was among the possessions found in the clothing of the deceased.

Dr Bolster said that the lungs of the deceased were four times the normal weight as the injuries had caused an “awful lot of blood to go down” to the primary organs of the respiratory system.

She stated that the “most serious trauma” was to the right side of the jaw causing multiple fragmentary fractures. There was also a fracture of the palate bone.

The pathologist said that there was evidence of "very severe forceful blow or blows" to the right side of the mandible with very extensive fractures to the mandible and a fractured dislocation on the left temporal mandible joint.

Alex Deady had told gardaí in his garda interviews he had not meant to kill Daly.

“I just swung and he hit the ground. I didn’t go to do it. I didn’t mean it. I had no intention of doing that to him. None… it was just instinct. I just swung.”

He said that he was “fuming” as his girlfriend had “got a belt” from Barry Daly.

The evidence had been that Daly struck the girlfriend of Alex Deady in the mouth outside Eily’s Bar in Doneraile just hours before his death.

Some witnesses indicated that the punch was deliberate, with others expressing the belief that it was accidental.

A large number of locals had gone to that bar that night for post-match celebrations after a local hurling team won a Junior B final.

Katie O’Reilly, the partner of the late Barry Daly, said in her evidence to the jury that she heard a “commotion” outside her home in the early hours of October 12th, 2025.

She woke in her bed and heard Baly outside the house shouting "stop," and then another voice yelled, "I’m going to kill you."

She then heard a “bang.” O’Reilly said it sounded like someone “getting a whack of something.”

Meanwhile, the jury will resume their deliberations on Monday in relation to a 17-year-old man who also went on trial last month charged with the murder of Daly.

Alex Deady and the 17-year-old had admitted the unlawful killing of Daly but had denied murder. The 17-year-old cannot be named because he is a minor.

The jury no longer has to consider the case of a third accused.

On June 24th a 16-year-old defendant pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty of the manslaughter of Daly.

The plea was accepted by the DPP.