Man Due To Be Sentenced For The Capital Murder Of Detective Garda Colm Horkan

Wednesday, 19 April 2023 10:33

By Caoimhe Harney

Last month, a jury found Stephen Silver guilty of capital murder

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 the detective with his own gun as he tried to arrest him in Castlerea, County Roscommon in June 2020.

Last month, a jury found Stephen Silver guilty of capital murder in what was a retrial before the Central Criminal Court.

After turning Detective Colm Horkan’s standard issue firearm on him during an attempted arrest, his trial heard he shot him eleven times.

He admitted shooting him 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 were unable to reach agreement but he was convicted of capital murder after nine hours of deliberations in his retrial.

Detective Horkan’s family will be given an opportunity to deliver a victim impact statement at his sentence hearing later this morning.

Once that’s done, 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.

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