Double assault victim Simone Lee has revealed her shock at learning that her first attacker has already been released from prison.
Ms Lee, who was subjected to two separate brutal assaults involving ammonia acid and boiling water, was stunned to learn that her ex Colin Ryan walked free from prison just before Christmas.
Just last week Ms Lee (43) got justice when her former pal Christopher Stokes (39) was jailed for 11 and a half years for a brutal attack in which he put a bag over her head, beat her - and poured ammonia acid and boiling water over her - before setting her Co Limerick apartment on fire in May 2021.
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But now Ms Lee has revealed her horror at only recently learning that her first attacker Ryan (34) was freed from prison in November 2022 - after serving just under six years in prison for a vicious and unprovoked attack he carried out against her in Limerick in 2016.
Speaking exclusively to this paper Ms Lee said: “To be honest now I’m still just in shock about it. He wasn’t even in prison that long.
“He got locked up in 2016 and now he’s out already. A friend contacted me and told me that she saw him in Limerick.
“I’d collapse now if I was walking down the street and I bumped into him,” she said.
Ryan was jailed for nine and a half years with the final two years of his sentence suspended for an attack that left Ms Lee with a brain injury, a broken nose, broken bones, serious scald injuries and burns to her face, neck and eyelids.
Ryan also stabbed Ms Lee in the back in a horrific attack that was described in court as being a “bloodbath.”
Ms Lee believes that her second attacker Christopher Stokes googled the case and then carried out a similar attack against her in 2021 - telling her during the ordeal that he intended to “finish the job that the other eejit started.”
Now she says she fears the very real prospect of bumping into Colin Ryan - though she says she hopes he learned the error of his ways during his short stint behind bars.
“I just don’t even want to think about it.
“I don’t want to be petrified again,” she said.
“There’s one thing I always said about him though, at least he pleaded guilty early.
“It never fully came back to me what he did to me.
“I woke up bald and they had to shave all my hair off.”
During Colin Ryan’s case in 2018, Limerick Circuit Court heard how gardai responded to the incident on November 27, 2016 - and discovered Ryan covered in blood telling them “she’s playing dead upstairs.”
The presiding judge told the court: “Gardaí encountered what can only be described as the most horrific of scenes. The flat can only be described as a bloodbath. There was blood everywhere.
“Gardaí discovered Ms Lee semi-naked and unconscious on the floor with burn marks and stab wounds on her back.”
Ms Lee was taken by ambulance to St James’s Hospital, Dublin, where she was put in an induced medical coma for three weeks.
Last week Christopher Stokes was jailed for the horrific assault of his former friend Ms Lee, during which he placed a bin-liner over her head, beat her, doused her with boiling water, acid and set her Co Limerick apartment on fire in May 2021.
Speaking to this paper after the sentencing, Ms Lee, who has now been issued with a panic button by gardai, said she believed Stokes researched the first attack by Colin Ryan.
“I’d made the mistake because I said to him that I'm so blessed to be alive because I ended up in an induced coma and I had to learn to walk again and talk again from the attack in 2016,” Simone told us.
“I said to him, I’m back on my own two feet, I have my own little place now and I’m so lucky to be alive. And then a few times he then said to me ‘I googled it, and I know all about it.
“People have said to me since, if you look at the other attack and now this, it’s like a complete copycat.”
And in the case heard before Cork’s Central Criminal Court last week, Stokes beat and kicked Ms Stokes, before he too scalded her with boiling water - and then told her he would “finish the job” that the “other eejit started.”
“I know he copied it. All the facts are there, and what he said to me that night was that he was going to finish what the other eejit started.”
Stokes blocked the door of the apartment with a fridge before setting the home on fire - with himself and Ms Stokes and elderly friend Tim Fehin (71) still inside.
Mr Fehin, who said he was too in fear of Stokes to intervene, eventually managed to escape prior to the fire and initially raided the alarm with gardai.
Now Ms Stokes says she wonders whether Stokes, who appeared to make no effort to escape the blaze he started, had intended to kill himself along with her.
“That’s one thing I’ll never know. I always said did he want to kill me, or me and him?
“Because he lit the fire and stayed there.”
But somehow, brave Simone managed to escape the blaze - something she says she still has no clear memory of today.
But she says she believes the skills she learned from surviving her previous assault might have saved her.
“In treatment I learned this: fight, flight or freeze. I just got up and instinct kicked in.
“I found out the next day my whole front door was barricaded so I don’t know how I got out the front door. But I did.”
Ms Lee says she can remember being in the back of an ambulance when she saw the fire brigade rescue Stokes - who she says appeared shocked to see she was still alive.
“I was in the back of the ambulance and I remember there was like a dark shadow in the back and I remember looking out and I saw him being led out in handcuffs.
“I practically saved his life as well. When I saw him he kind of looked at me and he looked down.
“I think he was in shock that I was still alive.”
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