One of two Limerick men accused of murdering a barman in the city four years ago has told a jury he was not at the scene at the time the barman was attacked. He said he had nothing to do with the killing.
Mr Raymond Casey (38), of John Carew Park and Mr Anthony Casey (21), of Mount Pleasant Avenue, Limerick, have pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr Noel Pyper (48) at, or near, Newenham Street on August 12th, 1997.
Mr Casey denied he was stalking Mr Pyper on the night of the attack. He said he didn't even know him and had nothing to do with his death.
When it was put to him that a Garda fingerprints expert had given evidence that a bloodied palm print on the wall in Lonergan's Lane, where Mr Pyper was attacked, was his print, the accused denied he had left any such mark.
"I wasn't there on the 12th: it was approximately a week prior to the 12th that I was in that lane or around that lane," he said.
Mr Casey told Mr John Phelan SC, defending, that the laneway was also known as a place to buy drugs.
He agreed he had bought drugs there. "I would have been through that laneway a thousand times, a million times, probably," he said.
He was in the laneway fixing a motorbike for half an hour to an hour prior to the date of Mr Pyper's death, he said.
He had also been in the vicinity when he and his brother went around collecting wheelie-bins during a Limerick Corporation refuse collection strike, he said.
Mr Phelan put to the accused a statement he made to garda∅ in which he allegedly said: "On the night I copped yer man Pyper, I went after him . . ."
He also allegedly said: "I told you, I didn't finish him off." Mr Casey denied making the statement.
He told counsel: "I swear on my two kids' lives, that I love very much, it never occurred."
He said he drank eight, nine or 10 pints and smoked two to three joints of hash, but he said he was not drunk and agreed that he knew what he was doing.
The trial continues before a jury and Mr Justice Carney today.