Hospital patient who punched sleeping man (88) to death in Cork hospital is jailed

Olivia Kelleher

A hospital patient with delirium who punched a sleeping 88-year-old man to death when they were in the same ward at the Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork has been jailed for 12 years.

Dylan Magee (33) had been found not guilty of murder but guilty of the manslaughter of Matthew Healy by reason of diminished responsibility.

The retired farmer from Berrings, Co Cork, who was described as a “kind, humble gentleman,” was struck more than 20 times by Magee in a ward at the hospital on January 22nd, 2023.

The jury at the trial in the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork last December (2025) had heard that Magee, of Churchfield Green in the city, was admitted to MUH on January 19th, 2023.

He had been urgently referred there by his GP. He was in a hallucinatory state, seeing dead people and hearing voices.

Magee suffers from addiction issues and was on an anti depressant when he was admitted to hospital. He told staff that he had taken 120 benzodiazepines in the week before his hospital admission.

Blood tests showed he tested positive for morphine and a chemical found in cannabis.

At around 5:15am on January 22nd, 2023 Magee became agitated and began assaulting Healy who was asleep in another bed in a hospital ward. Healy had been been in hospital for several days after he fell and hit his head at home.

Magee punched Healy between four and six times. Staff attempted to intervene. Magee struck Healy another three times before staff managed to drag him away from him.

One nurse broke a finger in the process of trying to restrain him. Magee was yelling that “This man (Healy) ate my son.”

When interviewed by gardaí in the aftermath of the attack, Magee claimed that a person had been tormenting people on the hospital ward. No such person existed.

He admitted that he had “lost the plot” and started beating his fellow patient. He was of the mistaken belief that the pensioner was a named person in his 20s and that he had “ate his son.”

Defence psychiatrist Dr Stephen Monks said that Magee’s doctor had given him an urgent hospital referral with suspected delirium. Dr Monks said that it was his belief that the delirium evolved in to withdrawal delirium.

Prosecution psychiatrist Dr Richard Church agreed with Monks that Magee was very severely impaired to the point of being unable to refrain from acting in the manner in which he did.

Both the defence and prosecution consultant pychiatrists in the case had agreed that the ability of Magee to refrain from the attack was impaired.

At a sentencing hearing in Cork on Friday, Justice Siobhan Lankford said that it was clear that Healy was in a “very helpless position and was a vulnerable person” when he was attacked by Magee.

She said that given his 25 previous convictions Magee could not be described as a person of good character.

The Judge noted the remorse of Magee and his entering of a plea of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility when he went on trial for murder.

She said that his defence senior counsel, Brendan Grehan, had offered the view that both Healy and his client had been let down by the system.

Justice Lankford said that at the least it was “very unwise to have him (Magee) in a general ward even with the benefit of a special care assistant.”

She thanked Claire Healy, a daughter of the deceased for delivering a “moving victim impact statement.”

Justice Lankford offered her condolences to the Healy family following the loss of “a real gentleman” in such awful circumstances. She also extended her sympathy to the family at the loss of mother Delia who passed away just weeks before her husband.

She said that she couldn’t ignore the psychiatric evidence in the case. She noted that case law in similar cases allowed for a reduction of about a third in the sentence.

Justice Lankford said that the level of mental disorder at the time of the offence was “so severe” that both psychiatrists had indicated that Magee might have been entitled to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

She jailed Magee for 13 years. The judge suspended the final year of the sentence to facilitate his rehabilitation back in to society. She had started with a headline sentence of twenty years.

Magee has to attend all probation service appointments, including addiction aftercare, upon his release from custody. The sentence was backdated to when he first entered custody on January 24th, 2023.

Meanwhile, in a victim impact statement Claire Healy previously said that her brother was burdened with the horrendous ordeal of having to formally identify the beaten body of their father in the morgue.

“I was spared that trauma, but it also meant that I never got to say goodbye.

She said that her father deserved “to slip away from this world as gently and kindly as the man he was.”

“Not lying in bed terrified, then choking on his own blood after being beaten to death by a man shouting that our Dad had eaten his children.”

“Words can't express how traumatising it has been to discover that the attack was carried out by someone who went on a drug binge, suffered delirium from the withdrawal, and then pleaded diminished responsibility.”

Healy described the verdict of guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility as being only suitable for “genuinely ill individuals.”

“Not for those suffering delirium due to self induced drug withdrawal. We are the product of our choices, and I will never accept excuses suggesting the perpetrator was not responsible for his actions. His own life choices led to him punching our Dad to death.”

She had that the court impose the “absolute maximum sentence permitted by law” and said that no member of her family “should ever have to fear crossing paths” with Magee again.