A 29-year-old Dundalk man has been given a three-and-a-half-year sentence for stabbing his identical twin brother to death in a fit of 'blind rage'.
The mother of Aidan Donlon from Priorland Grove told the court the two were best friends until the fatal drunken row in Drogheda last year.
Aidan Donlon pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Dundalk today.
Sgt Liam Hogan told the court that the accused had phoned for an ambulance after stabbing his brother, Colm, at a flat in Fair Street, Drogheda, on 16 September.
In interviews with gardaí, he said they had been having a 'really great day' together until a row developed and Colm hit him.
In a rage, Aidan got a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Colm twice in the back. He bled to death. Mr Donlon has no previous convictions.
Counsel for the defendant, Derek Kenneally, said the brothers had always been exceptionally close all their lives and had followed each other to the US and Canada to work.
Another brother had died aged 17 a number of years previously.
Mrs Adeline Dolan, the mother to the victim and the accused, told the court that the two brothers had always been very close.
She said they were best friends and soul mates.
She said they had now lost two sons and did not want to lose a third. They still loved and supported Aidan despite what he had done, she added.
Judge Paul Carney said this was the third case of fratricide he had dealt with in a short space of time.
The appropriate sentence in this case he said was three and a half years, backdated to the time of the defendant's arrest in September of last year.
