A jilted lover
faces life in prison after being found guilty of luring a love rival
into shaking his hand and then fatally stabbed him.
Ryan Donnellan,
30, who has been described as 'insanely jealous', told his
ex-girlfriend Nicola McKeegan that if he could meet her current partner
he would shake his hand and walk away - safe in the knowledge she was
happy.
But when taxi
driver boyfriend Steven Chadwick arrived for the supposed conciliatory
meeting in Carslake Road, Manchester, last August, Donnellan knifed him
in the torso, a court heard.
Despite his injury Chadwick managed to drive away from the scene and call 999.
But he lost consciousness after half-a-mile, and tragically died days later in hospital.
Chadwick, 30,
from Monsall, had met McKeegan, 25, at Cresta Cars - the Cheetham Hill
cab firm where she worked as a booking agent, and where he worked as a
driver.
Before killing
Chadwick, Donnellan had tried to ‘emotionally blackmail’ McKeegan into
coming back to him by claiming to have overdosed on pills and to be
suffering from a brain tumour and ‘internal bleeding’.
But when she
confirmed she liked someone else - Chadwick - Donnellan appeared to
react calmly, before secretly arming himself with a blade from her
kitchen, Manchester Evening News reported.
Donnellan, of
Gunson Street, Miles Platting, denied murder in a three-week trial,
saying he wasn’t bothered about the end of the relationship, and that
Chadwick had pulled a knife on him and was injured in the struggle which
followed.
But he was found unanimously guilty after jurors’ deliberated for around two hours.
