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MONSTER CAGED

Vicious brute should be locked away for life after leaving my son for dead, says mum after ‘lenient’ sentence

• Published: 8:00, 7 Aug 2023
• Updated: 14:04, 7 Aug 2023

THE State is set to appeal the “lenient” sentence handed down to killer and rapist Ian Horgan, The Irish Sun can reveal.

The vicious beast was caged for eight-and-a-half years for a horror hammer attack on Hassan Baker, 29 and the assault of his mum, Mary O’Callaghan, 66, at their home in Cork City in March 2022.

Horgan, 39, pleaded guilty to the charges in the Circuit Criminal Court and received the sentence by Judge Helen Boyle in late June.

But an appeal against its “undue leniency” has now been lodged by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Brave pensioner Mary tried to save her son Hassan when Horgan stormed into their home in Cork city’s MacCurtain’s Villas and attacked him with a claw hammer.

But the convicted killer showed no mercy and continued to bash Hassan’s head with the weapon as he lay unconscious on the floor of their living room.

It was only when Mary told him he had killed her son that the ­psycho stopped and left.

Before leaving callous Horgan recorded the victims, with Hassan’s face unrecognisable with the amount of blood pouring from it.

The attack was premeditated and meticulously executed with Horgan using a derelict shed near the ­victims’ home to change his clothes before arriving at the house.

When Horgan finished he went back to the shed and changed out of his bloodsoaked clothes and threw away the hammer which was recovered by cops later.

He then went to Fitzgerald Park and sat in the sun while posting the horrifying video on Snapchat.

Psycho Horgan also sent it to his partner, who had previously had a relationship with Hassan.

He later met his girlfriend in a Cork City pub.

In his victim impact statement, Hassan said he feels “devastated, scared and I live in a paranoid state” after the hammer attack.

And he is always reminded of what happened because of the huge scar on his head.

He spent weeks in hospital with fractures to his skull, jaw and orbital bone around his eye socket.

He now has a ­stammer, headaches, nightmares, seizures and extensive scarring as a result of the attack.

Following the trial, mum Mary told The Irish Sun that Horgan should have been jailed for a lot longer.

‘HE SHOULD NEVER BE FREED’

The OAP told us: “He is a vicious brute and he should be locked away for life with the key thrown away. I was so ­disappointed.

“I was expecting to hear at least 13 years. He sat in that court ­without a care in world as if he was saying ‘just get it over with’.

“He wasn’t upset about anything and then for him to write letters of remorse to us on the day of the court, it was a farce.

“We didn’t read them and we told the guards to burn them.

“We felt that sentence was an injustice to us after all we went through and it didn’t seem to register that Hassan was left for dead. I thought he was dead.

“That type of sentence means ­nothing to him. I was staring at him. He didn’t even look at us.

“Going to prison means nothing to him but if I had my way, he wouldn’t see freedom until he was an old man or he should never be released back into the community.”

Horgan, of no fixed abode and formerly of the Hermitage in Macroom, Co Cork, was 16 when he raped and killed beautician Rachel Kiely in October 2000 when she was walking her dog in Ballincollig Regional Park.

He has 17 previous convictions for affray, violent disorder and robbery.

And Mary said: “We are not the first family whose lives he has destroyed by his viciousness and lack of compassion.

“He has had plenty of time to be rehabilitated since the first time he killed that young woman

“Listening to his previous convictions, it seems every time he gets out he commits another serious and violent crime.”

No date has been set for the appeal being taken by the DPP.