The ages of the victim and perpetrator, together with the murder taking place shortly after the killing of teenager Keane Mulready-Woods, resulted in the case becoming highly publicized in Ireland.

[4] On 16 January 2020, Cameron Blair was attending a student house party on the Bandon Road in Cork, Ireland.

[4] The seventeen-year-old and the fourteen-year-old cannot be named due to Irish law surrounding the identification of minors involved in criminal proceedings.

[3] O'Connor was in possession of a 6 inches (15 cm)-long copper-coated kitchen knife, which he had taken from the house that was hosting the party.

[17] Blair was murdered at approximately 9:20 p.m. when the seventeen-year-old lunged forward and fatally stabbed him in the neck, before fleeing the scene on foot with the other two teenagers.

[7] The seventeen-year-old was arrested on 23 January 2020,[20] and brought before a special sitting of the Cork District Court the following night.

Detective Garda Rory O'Connell gave evidence of the arrest of the teenager, who made no reply to the charge.

[24] On 13 March 2020, the seventeen-year-old appeared before the Central Criminal Court, with Mr Justice Paul McDermott presiding.

[38] Due to the appeal beginning when the killer was an adult, Blair's parents sought the right for his name to be published.

Considered a landmark ruling in Ireland, it has implications for all child-offenders who fail to finish their trials before they turn eighteen, including the perpetrators of the high-profile Murder of Ana Kriégel, both of whom were fourteen at the time of the killing and will be appearing before the courts as adults in the coming years.

[42] The fourteen-year-old's lawyer, Timothy O'Leary, described him as "an impressionable and impulsive young person with a lack of emotional development".

[7] On Friday 28 May 2021, the boy pleaded guilty to the charge of committing violent disorder, but refuted the claim that he had produced a knife capable of causing harm.

[47] Darragh O'Connor and Craig O'Donoghue travelled to Ayia Napa, Cyprus in order to avoid giving evidence.

Upon their return to Ireland in July 2021, both men were charged with what O'Connor's sentencing judge described as "calculated and deliberate" contempt of court, and were each jailed for two months in two separate hearings.

[51] A system error calculated that O'Donoghue was entitled to remission, but this is not available to prisoners jailed for contempt of court in Ireland.

He received a 25% remission on his sentence, an automatic entitlement for prisoners in Ireland who are not found guilty of further offences while incarcerated.

[37] On 5 March 2020, Scott O'Connor, of Churchfield, Cork,[45] was brought before Judge Mary Dorgan, along with the seventeen-year-old murder suspect and the fourteen-year-old offender.

[53][8] Ronan Munro, O'Connor's defense counsel, admitted to the court that his client had been "clearly threatening violence" on the night of Cameron's murder, and had been brandishing a knife.

[54][55] This was a deviation from previous comments made by O'Connor to his probation officer, in which he had minimized his role in the altercation with Blair.

[53] O'Connor pleaded guilty to committing violent disorder and to producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury.

[16] Mr Justice Keane originally set a headline sentence of seven years for the charge of violent disorder, but reduced it to five due to mitigating factors including O'Connor's history of mental health issues.

In a statement delivered by Kennedy, the court said that it agreed with the DPP's argument that suspending three years of O'Connor's sentence had constituted a "substantial difference from the norm".

[57] Rev Anne Suske, who had been the chaplain at the secondary school Blair had attended, led a memorial service for him at St Peter's Church, Bandon, on 26 January 2020.

[60] Dr Paul Colton, Bishop of the Church of Ireland Diocese of Cork Cloyne and Ross offered his condolences to the family.

[1] In October 2021, Blair's parents met with Justice Minister Heather Humphreys to discuss the possibility of launching a campaign aimed at educating secondary school students about the dangers of knife crime.

The minister is reportedly also examining the possibility of making the parents of young offenders more responsible for the actions of their children.

[69][71] Furthermore, according to Garda statistics, knives accounted for an all-time low proportion of objects seized by Gardaí.

[74] On 4 September 2020, a man named Noel Barry made "grossly offensive and menacing" phone calls to the Blair family.

[76] Barry rang Noel Blair, Cameron's father, four times and threatened to burn his wife, Kathy, and surviving son, Alan, to death, among other threats.

[77] In October 2021, the abuse Barry directed at the Blair family was provided by journalist Frank Coughlan as an example of ongoing anti-Protestant sectarianism in Ireland.