A man is due to be handed a life sentence today for the capital murder of Detective Garda Colm Horkan.
Stephen Silver, of Foxford, County Mayo, shot Detective Horkan with his own gun as he tried to arrest him in Castlerea, County Roscommon in June 2020.
After turning Detective Colm Horkan’s standard-issue firearm on him during an attempted arrest, his trial heard he shot him eleven times.
Detective Horkan’s family will be given an opportunity to deliver a victim impact statement at his sentence hearing later this morning.
Mr Silver admitted to shooting Garda Colm Horkan but claimed he was suffering a relapse of a mental disorder at the time.
The issue for the jurors to decide was whether he had the mental capacity to form the requisite intent for murder.
The jury in his original trial was unable to reach an agreement, but he was convicted of capital murder after nine hours of deliberations in his retrial at the Central Criminal Court last month.
Mr Silver will be handed a mandatory life sentence, but because he killed a Garda, he won’t be able to apply for parole for forty years.
