A man who stabbed a burglar to death in a “gross overreaction” of self-defence when two men broke into his east Belfast home has today been handed an eight-and-a-half year sentence.
rdering David Matchett to serve half of that in jail and half under supervised licence conditions, Craigavon Crown Court Judge Patrick Lynch QC said while he accepted the defendant had been faced with a “frightening and unjustifiable assault” in his own home, “the court cannot shy away from the fact that a young man who should have had his whole life to look forward to is now dead”.
Matchett, who turns 31 on Saturday, from Upper Greenwell Street in Ards, had initially been charged with the murder of Reece Leeman, but that was not proceeded after the Crown accepted a guilty plea of manslaughter.
The judge said the case emphasised “the dangers of wielding a knife” where events and the resulting “tragic consequences” can go far beyond initial intentions.
Leeman was 21 when on March 15, 2019, he and his friend Robert McQuaide, also 21, decided to rob Matchett’s stash of cannabis that they knew was in his kitchen. They pulled their clothes up over their faces and McQuaide knocked loudly on the front door of Matchett’s then home on Kyle Street in east Belfast.
As soon as Matchett opened the door, McQuaide “pinned him to the wall” by his throat while Leeman demanded “give us the weed and no one gets hurt”. However, when McQuaide went to the kitchen to grab the drugs, the defendant armed himself with a large kitchen knife.
Leeman was stabbed a total of six times. but according to a pathologist, the cause of his “rapid death” was a 24cm wound which would’ve required “no more than moderate force” to penetrate his chest wall and heart.
Judge Lynch outlined that the plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter had been accepted by the prosecution on the basis that due to the traumatic situation he was faced with, coupled with Matchett’s “intellectual limitations” and diagnosed learning difficulties, “the defendant did not form the necessary intent for murder”.
Last October, McQuaide, from Broadlands Gardens in Carrickfergus, was handed a combination order of 30 months on probation and 100 hours of community service after he entered a guilty plea to burglary of Matchett’s home.
The judge said he was satisfied that neither McQuaide nor Leeman were armed, but that Matchett had grabbed the knife from the block in the kitchen and having stabbed his victim, dumped the blood-stained weapon in a wheelie bin of a neighbouring property.
DNA from the blade matched the victim’s, while a blood spot on the inside of the bin had come from Matchett. The court heard it was Matchett who had rang 999, telling emergency services “two masked men come to my house with a knife. I got the knife off him. I think I might have killed him. He’s lying on the ground, you have got to help me.”
Arrested and interviewed, Matchett told police that in the 24 hours before the incident, someone had been driving a black car up and down his street, sounding their horn, a window had been smashed and eggs had been thrown at his home. Fearing those responsible might come back, he had left a hammer by the front door and had gone to bed fully clothed.
Claiming the intruders had been “waving a long kitchen knife in his face” when he was pinned to the wall, Matchett said: “Whenever I had the intention to grab the knife I didn’t really think. I don’t know what I was thinking… I don’t really know where that came from in me to do that. I defended my life.
“I defended where I lived and I felt like in that moment that they were going to kill me. I was terrified… it shouldn’t have happened the way it happened but it did.”
The judge said Leeman’s family has been left “understandably devastated by their loss”, with his grandfather stating that “my family and I are almost three years into a life sentence from which there is no respite or parole”.
Turning to the various reports compiled on Matchett, Judge Lynch said it was clear that although he had lived alone, he was only able to do so with significant support from his family to perform day-to-day tasks.
Considering his low IQ, which is in the bottom 1% of the population, coupled with ADHD and a moderate learning disability, he was left with an image that Matchett was “struggling to cope with life, seeking refuge in drugs, bullied by his peers because of a lack of intelligent functioning and social skills”.
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