House fire victims include former death row inmate

1 day ago 10

Eimear Flanagan

BBC News NI

BBC Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs pictured cooking in a kitchen some years ago. She has long grey hair and a fringe and is wearing glasses and a black and white patterned top. She is smiling broadly and is holding a large wooden spoon beside a pot on a stove.

A US woman who spent years on death row for murders she didn't commit was among two people found dead after a house fire in the Republic of Ireland.

Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs died alongside County Galway man Kevin Kelly after a blaze at a house in rural County Galway on Tuesday morning.

Ms Jacobs, who was in her 70s, spent 17 years in prison in the US after she was accused of killing two police officers in Florida in 1976.

She was sentenced to the electric chair but it was later commuted to a life sentence. On her release she campaigned against the death penalty.

The house fire broke out at a rural house in Gleann Mhic Mhuireann, near the village of Casla in Connemara.

Firefighters and gardaí (Irish police) were alerted to the blaze at about 06:20 local time on Tuesday.

Photographs from the scene show a garda cordon blocking access to a property up a small county lane.

The bodies of Ms Jacobs and Mr Kelly, who was in his early 30s, were recovered from the property by firefighters.

Irish broadcaster RTÉ has reported that the cause of the fire is under examination but at this stage foul play is not suspected.

RTÉ The garda (Irish police) cordon at the scene of a fatal house fire at Gleann Mhic Mhuireann, County Galway. A yellow and blue garda car is parked on a rural country road, lined by trees and shrubs. A corrogated metal roof of a stone building is partially visible behind the car.

Ms Jacobs had been living in the Republic of Ireland for several years, having married an Irishman who was also wrongly convicted of a double murder.

Her late husband, Peter Pringle, was also sentenced to death after being accused of murdering two police officers during a bank robbery in rural Ireland in 1980.

He was one of the last people to be sentenced to death before capital punishment was abolished in the Republic of Ireland.

Mr Pringle served almost 15 years in jail before being acquitted.

The couple, who met while giving a talk about her death-row experience, later married in New York in 2011.

They worked to help others who had been wrongfully convicted to adjust to life after release from prison, with Ms Jacobs running a retreat for ex-inmates.

The couple took part in a BBC Radio Ulster documentary called Exonerated in 2017.

Following Tuesday's fire, the bodies of Ms Jacobs and Mr Kelly were taken to University Hospital Galway for post-mortem examinations.

GardaÍ have appealed for witnesses to the fire to contact them.

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