The niece of an Irish man who was murdered in London has described her uncle's attacker as a "despicable individual".
Peter Augustine was yesterday sentenced to life in prison for the murder of John Mackey in London last May.
Mr Mackey was 87 years old had been living in London since his teens.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Saturday with Cormac Ó hEadhra, Mr Mackey’s niece Patricia Schan said that Augustine lost his temper many times during court proceedings.
"It was very, very difficult because it was a very small courtroom ... he kept shouting at us, which was quite scary," she said.
"When he was in the witness stand, he was literally a stone's throw from us, and that was really intimidating.
"He lost his temper numerous times during the proceedings. He was taken down to the cells three or four times, the judge wouldn't put up with it.
"You could see that the man had just no control of his temper at all. I had a terrible moment where he was leaning out of the witness stand, roaring at our barrister and I just had this vision that was the last thing Uncle John saw. It broke my heart completely, it really did."
'Terrible effect' on relative
Ms Schan said that the trial was triggering for her and her family, particularly for her cousin Stephen, who had been through a similar incident in the past.
"Stephen and John were the only two in London, so they were friends as well as anything else," she said.
"Stephen was one of three boys of my uncle Christy, John's brother ... He was attacked in the street in the late 1990s when he was a very young man and left for dead.
"He was in a coma for weeks and weeks and recovered, but it's left him with lifelong disability and brain injury symptoms.
"It had a terrible effect on him because of course he went to the hospital, he was called to the A&E and realised really quickly, 'Oh my God, this is exactly what happened to me'.
"It was awful, because they kept talking about the trauma, the stamping on his head and all of that sort of thing ... there was a couple of days that Stephen just couldn't come to court, it affected his mental health so badly."
'Perfect uncle'
Ms Schan described Mr Mackey as the "perfect uncle".
"There's 22 of us, 22 nieces and nephews, and he was the perfect uncle because he was always on our side," she said.
"He was a real ally to all of us, always up to mischief and he was always slipping us a fiver.
"He still did that even when I used to see him in the last few years, as he walked me to the tube, he'd slip me a fiver, even though I'm in my 60s."
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Ms Schan delivered the victim impact statement on behalf of her family in court, which she described as "very difficult".
She said she wanted to do it so people would "know what John was about".
"I was very determined because I'm the oldest of the 22 nieces and nephews, so I'm kind of, by default, the matriarch," she said.
"It was very, very difficult, but I was very determined to do it because I just wanted a voice from the family, not like a legal person or a policeman or something like that.
"I just wanted them to hear, you know, what John was about. I didn't want that end to define him, and I was really determined about that."
