Former LITH president gets a year of probation for domestic battery
Earlier this year, Paul Mulcahy was knocking on doors during his campaign for another four-year term as Lake in the Hills village president when he came upon a woman in her driveway.
Mulcahy, who was arrested in November 2016 on charges of misdemeanor domestic battery, went to talk to the woman, but she would have none of it.
"I know who you are, I know what you did and I want you off my property," Mulcahy recalled the woman saying, adding he felt like he was some sort of "inhuman beast."
"I will never forget that look," Mulcahy told McHenry County Judge Michael Feetterer Monday at a sentencing hearing in Woodstock.
Mulcahy, 65, lost his re-election bid in the April election and he also was found guilty of two counts of misdemeanor domestic battery after a bench trial last week.
Feetterer sentenced Mulcahy, a former postal worker and veteran who had 20 years of Lake in the Hills public service, to a year of conditional discharge, which is a form of probation, and ordered him to have no contact with his ex-girlfriend.
Mulcahy, who had no previous arrests, also must undergo a substance abuse evaluation. If he violates his conditional discharge, he could be resentenced up to 364 days in jail.
According to testimony last week, the two dated about two years and had a rocky relationship. They went out Nov. 5, 2016, had drinks and went back to his home and got into an argument. Mulcahy told the woman to leave and pushed her out the front door. She began calling and texting him and ringing the doorbell to get her purse and other belongings, which Mulcahy put on his back porch.
Mulcahy later determined she re-entered his home by popping out a screen on an unlocked window. Mulcahy found her sleeping in a spare bedroom, and when she refused to get dressed and leave, he dragged her down the carpeted steps of his home by her feet.
The woman was not present for Mulcahy's sentencing.
"I deeply regret what I did that night," Mulcahy told the judge. "I am extremely sorry."