Court roundup - five people before the courts in NI this week

From a man who killed his partner's cousin by striking him up to nine times in the head being jailed for 15 years to a father sentenced to a minimum of 20 years for his infant son's murder, it's been another busy week in the courts.

This is our new weekly roundup of some of those who have been before the courts this second week of March 2025.

Look out for:

Teacher jailed for sex offences involving one of her pupils

79-year old Co Down woman who sexually abused child four decades ago jailed

Timothy Walker and Natalie Brannigan

A man who launched a “brutal and sustained” attack on his partner’s cousin as he slept in his bed was handed a minimum sentence of 15 years for his murder this week.

Denis Curtis Shearer was subjected to a fatal attack in the bedroom of his Fernmore Road home in Bangor in the early hours of February 28, 2021. He was struck up to nine times with a blunt weapon and his head wounds were so severe that it was initially thought that he had been shot.

Timothy Walker, 43, whose address was given as HMP Maghaberry and who is originally from Abbey Ring in Holywood, showed no emotion as the tariff for Mr Shearer’s murder was imposed at Belfast Crown Court on Tuesday.

His partner Natalie Brannigan, 42, from The Green in Holywood, admitted a charge of assisting offenders and was handed a two-year sentence which was suspended for two years. The mother-of-four accepted that on February 28, 2021, knowing Timothy Walker had committed an offence, she did an act with intent to impede his apprehension by driving her car to collect him in the Glencairn area of north Belfast after he burned his car out then drove him to Holywood and onwards to Newtownards.

Mr Justice O’Hara said: “Her crime was to help Walker after she knew from him, as she certainly did, that he had done something terrible to Denis Shearer.”

Craig Rowland and Laura Graham

A Co Armagh man, who shook his baby son so violently that it caused “catastrophic” brain injuries, was told this week that he will spend the next 20 years behind bars for the child’s murder.

Lewis Oliver Rowland sustained life-changing brain injuries in November 2015 and was left with a range of disabilities when he was just 13 weeks old.

He died in October 2018 in his foster mother’s arms aged three from complications arising from surgery to insert a feeding tube into his stomach. His 29-year old father Craig Rowland, from Millington Park in Portadown, denied murdering his son.

He stood trial last October and at the conclusion of an often harrowing four-week trial, the jury of eight men and four women convicted him on a charge of murder.

The child killer was back in Belfast Crown Court on Thursday where the 20-year tariff imposed by Mr Justice O’Hara, who revealed that despite the jury’s verdict, Rowland continues to refuse to accept responsibility for what he did and has blamed medical staff for his son’s death.

Also sentenced was Lewis’s mother Laura Graham, who is 32 and from Edward Street in Lurgan. Prior to the murder trial, both she and Rowland admitted a charge of wilfully neglecting their son on November 20, 2015 by failing to obtain timely medical treatment.

Graham was handed a combination order consisting of three years Probation and 100 hours community service for the child cruelty charge. On that same charge, Rowland had a 12-month sentence imposed which will run concurrently with the 20-year tariff.

Ryan Hand

TV presenter and DJ Ryan Hand was more than twice the legal drink drive limit when he left his own lane and crashed into an oncoming car, a court heard on Thursday.

Standing in the dock of Downpatrick Magistrates Court wearing a navy shirt and trousers, 37-year-old Hand, with an address at Mountearl Gardens in London, was charged with driving with excess alcohol and careless driving arising from the road traffic collision on 14 September last year.

Hand, who entered guilty pleas to both charges, had been DJing at the Irish Open in Royal Co. Down that day when he opted to get behind the wheel of a Fiat 500 car.

The driver of the other vehicle, a Renault Clio, told police how the Fiat 500 being driven by Hand had “veered across the road” and crashed into her and in the crash, she sustained a fractured ankle.

District Judge Amanda Brady told Hand however that given the fact he was more than twice the legal drink drive limit “you cannot expect the minimum” as she imposed an 18 month driving ban in addition to fines amounting to £500.

Judith Evans

A teacher who groomed and sexually abused a 14-year old pupil was jailed for two years on Friday and placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life.

As she imposed the four-year sentence on Judith Evans - which was divided equally between prison and licence - Judge Patricia Smyth said the mother-of-two had “groomed this child, who was vulnerable by reason of age and personal circumstances, basking in his adolescent attraction towards her”.

Evans, 33, from Elmwood Grove in Newtownabbey, was a teacher at the Belfast Boys Model School when the offences occurred last year. Due to her conduct and offending, she is no longer teaching and is now the subject of a five-year Sexual Offences Prevention Order which bans her from working with children.

Despite her initial denials - and at one point accusing her young victim of raping her and being in “complete control” - she admitted eight charges. Evans was sentenced for sexual communication with a child, three counts of meeting a child following sexual grooming, sexual activity with a child involving penetration, causing a child to watch a sexual act and possessing indecent images of the schoolboy.

These offences were committed between March 1 and May 17, 2024.

Hazel Templeton

A 79-year old Co Down woman who sexually abused a child four decades ago was jailed on Tuesday. Hazel Templeton, from Ballyrainey Road in Comber, had a sentence of two years and nine months imposed upon her at Belfast Crown Court. During this week's sentencing it emerged that Templeton was 39 when she abused the then 12-year old male in the summer of 1984.

The pensioner pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault and three counts of inciting gross indecency with a child on dates between July 1 and August 31, 1984.

Despite her guilty pleas, the court heard she has engaged in “victim-blaming” in a bid to justify her behaviour and told a Probation Officer the injured party was ‘physically mature for his age’ and that she ‘hoped that he would view the sexual behaviour as a rite of passage and helping him to gain sexual experience’.

As he jailed the mother-of-two, Judge Mark Reel said Templeton had “acted for sexual gratification and took advantage of a child”. Following the sentencing, Templeton's victim said she had stolen his childhood and that he was speaking out in the hopes other males will not sit in silence..

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