A teenager told a court on Thursday all he could hear was the sound of wood smacking off his then 12-year-old friend after he saw former All-Star and Clare All-Ireland winning hurler Niall Gilligan go to hit him.
At Ennis Circuit Court, the teenager said a “horrible thing happened to my friend” when recalling the alleged assault of his then 12-year-old friend on October 5th, 2023, at the Jamaica Inn hostel in Sixmilebridge.
Mr Gilligan (48) of Rossroe, Kilmurry, Sixmilebridge, denies the assault causing harm with a stick of the boy.
The two boys had been exploring the abandoned Jamaica Inn hostel after 5pm on the day in question.
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Mr Gilligan owned the hostel at the time and the jury has been told, in the days leading up to October 5th, it had been broken into and vandalised.
Under cross examination via video link from a room at Ennis courthouse, the now teenager acknowledged in his interview with gardaí in November 2023 he said he saw Mr Gilligan hit his friend.
On Thursday afternoon, the teenager said he did not see Mr Gilligan hit the other boy. He said: “I saw him go to hit him, I mis-phrased that. All I could hear was the sound of wood smacking off my friend.”
The teenager said his friend was “tiny” at the time of the incident.
The witness told counsel for Mr Gilligan, Patrick Whyms BL (instructed by solicitor, Daragh Hassett), when his friend slipped as they were running away from Mr Gilligan, “I saw Niall coming at him with the stick about to swing at him”.
He said: “We were both running away and he attacked my friend when we were both running in the opposite direction to him.”
The teenager disagreed with Mr Gilligan’s version of events in which he said the altercation with his friend took place inside the building.
Asked how he felt by the specialist Garda interviewer in his November 2023 video evidence, the boy said “terrified”, and added “but I just got out of there as fast as I could, all I could think was ‘get out of there’ and I did”.
Referring to his friend’s screaming, the boy said: “I heard him shouting, like I heard him screaming like telling him to stop. My friend telling him to f**k off and to leave him alone, that was about it.”
The witness hid in a nearby industrial estate and he said that felt relatively safe “but I was still very scared that somehow he could have seen me”.
A short time later, the boy said he saw his friend come around the corner “and he was limping like he was holding his arm, holding his hand, holding the wrist he broke and it was all swelling up”.
The jury also heard from witness for the State, Linda Quinn, from Sixmilebridge, who runs the local GAA club shop.
She said on her way into the club on the evening of October 5th, she noticed a child near the gate and something did not look right.
She said the boy asked her if she thought his hand was broken. “It was very swollen.”
He then showed her a “big gash” on his leg and asked her opinion.
When Ms Quinn asked him what happened, he told her he had fallen off his bike.
There was another deep gash on his arm. Ms Quinn told him he might need to get stitches. At this, the child got upset and Ms Quinn offered to give him a lift home.
Shortly afterwards, they arrived at his house, and after speaking to the boy’s aunt, Ms. Quinn returned to work.
The trial continues on Friday before a jury of seven men and five women.
