The father of Sara Staunton, the 28-year-old mother who was killed in her home in Mayo Abbey in December 2013, said his daughter told him on the morning of her death that she wanted to turn her life around.
Ray Gralton (23 ), with an address at Mount Prospect, Roscommon, was sentenced on Monday to 10 years for killing Ms Staunton at Portagh, Mayo Abbey, on December 13 2013.
The final three years of the sentence were suspended.
The Central Criminal Court heard previously that Ms Staunton and Gralton were in a “turbulent relationship” for about a year prior to her death.
They fought physically on the night of December 13.
At one stage during the night, Gralton threw cans of beer at Ms Staunton’s head. The mother-of-two went to bed that night but never woke up.
Speaking on the Today with Sean O’Rourke show on RTÉ Radio 1 on Wednesday, Pat Staunton said he expects his daughter’s killer will be free again in five and a half years.
He said he met his daughter for breakfast on the morning of the day she died.
Chillingly, Sara’s killer Gralton was also present at the breakfast when Ms Staunton told her father she wanted to get off drink and drugs, move back home, and get her children back. Her two children had been living apart from their mother.
“She was happy, she was so happy that she had a plan after all,” said Mr Staunton.
Mr Staunton said his daugther was a lovely girl and a wonderful singer.
He said Sara’s volatile nature was all that was portrayed during the sentencing hearing and there was much more to his daugther than this.
He said his daugther had suffered from alcohol problems since she was a young teen but when she wasn’t drinking she was “one of the nicest kids you could ever meet”.
Mr Staunton said he expressed his deepest fear to Sara, three weeks before she died, that her violent relationship with Gralton would kill her.
Mr Staunton also expressed his sympathy for Ray Gralton’s mother, who he described as another victim of his daughter’s violent death.
“There is not only us as survivors of our daugther’s death,” he explained. “She [Mrs Gralton] has to live with that, that her son killed a person... My heart went out to her. The only different between Mrs Gralton and myself and my wife is that she will be able to see her son again. I will never have that.”
