The husband of murdered Mongolian national Urantsetseg Tserendorj has told the Central Criminal Court how hard it was to carry on living after his wife was murdered by a teenager as she walked home from work.
The court also heard today that the teenager, who was 14 when he carried out the murder, has 31 previous convictions, including those related to robbery, violence and drugs.
“Humans lack humans, we lack each other’s love, what we share is happiness and sorrows, but now it is very hard to live,” said Ulambayer Surenkhor in a victim impact statement read out during the sentencing hearing of the 16-year-old boy.
The accused, who cannot be named because he is a minor, had denied the murder of Ms Tserendorj (49) but had pleaded guilty to her manslaughter on January 29th, 2021.
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The State did not accept his plea and the jury in his trial returned a guilty verdict.
Ms Tserendorj was stabbed in the neck on a walkway between George’s Dock and Custom House Quay in the IFSC, Dublin on January 20th, 2021, after the teenager attempted to rob her.
She was declared dead on the evening of January 29th, 2021, but to facilitate family travelling to Ireland from abroad, she was kept on life support until February 3rd. Ms Tserendorj, who worked in Dublin’s city centre, had moved to Ireland with her husband and two children some 15 years previously.
Det Sgt Brendan Casey said at today’s sentencing hearing that evidence was heard at the trial that both of the teenager’s parents were chronic drug addicts. His grandmother gave evidence of him becoming involved in the abuse of drugs from an early age.
In his victim impact statement, Mr Surenkhor said that he and his family had lived happily until “that terrible tragedy”.
“I lost my beloved wife and our children lost their mother. My health has been affected by severe mental difficulties and I have heart problems,” said Mr Surenkhor, who said that the couple were each other’s first loves.
A victim impact statement was made by Ms Tserendorj’s 17-year-old daughter, Suvd, who said she has been suffering mental health difficulties since her mother’s murder.
“Losing half of myself has left me feeling hopeless. I lost all of my motivation, and the times I managed to make it into school, I spent 90% of the time with the school counsellors. I am still paralysed by what happened,” she said.
Ms Tserendorj’s son, Tamir, who lives in Mongolia, described his mother as “the most joyful, caring and kind person who treated everyone equally. “I went back to Mongolia but it is very difficult. We have relatives back home who are deeply upset,” he said.
On the same night as the murder, the teenager attempted to steal a phone from another woman, Tayo Odelade.
He was also charged with an incident in a Spar shop in O’Connell Street at 5.30am on the same date, during which he threatened the shopkeeper and said he had a blade.
There was a final charge against the teenager of stealing a bicycle two days earlier on January 18th in Talbot Place, during which its owner Yu Yu Son was injured.
As part of the mitigation by defence, the teenager’s grandmother read out a letter to the court. She said her grandson used to be sports mad, excelling at hurling and boxing. She said that he changed after an encounter with his birth mother and began to get into trouble at school.
“His new friends were all involved in stealing bikes and using the money to buy drugs. I got many agencies involved but nothing worked. He would be awake at night crying and made three suicide attempts,” she said.
Defence counsel, Michael O’Higgins SC said that the murder was not premeditated and the crime was opportunistic. He added that the teenager had taken “a very significant quantity of drugs” on the day of the murder.
Mr O’Higgins asked the court to give his client the maximum credit it could to reflect the offence and the circumstances of the offender.
Mr Justice Tony Hunt put the matter back to January 16th, 2023, to deliver sentence and remanded the teenager in detention to that date.