A man accused of the murder of a child during an arson attack on a house in Darndale, Dublin, last year, threw a petrol-bomb to take revenge on a member of the family for assaulting him earlier that night, a jury was told yesterday.
In the Central Criminal Court, Mr Gerard Redmond (36), Ferrycarrig Park, Coolock, Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Adam Lieghio, who was a month short of his second birthday when he died in an arson attack on a house in Buttercup Park, Darndale, on July 23rd, 2000.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Mr Edward Comyn SC told a jury of six women and six men that a serious assault on the accused man by a member of the family, Mr Steffanio (Steffan) Lieghio, could have been "the sparking point for what happened later on".
A teenage girl told the jury that in the early hours of the morning Mr Gerard Redmond called to her home around the corner from the Lieghio house, asked her if she had a glass bottle and told her he was going to set fire to the house. He then asked her to promise to say that their conversation never happened.
The girl's father, Mr Jimmy Mahony, told Mr Comyn that when he arrived home from birthday celebrations in a local pub, Mr Redmond was already there. He began arguing with the children, so Mr Mahony asked him to leave.
Mr Mahony said his daughter told him she followed Mr Redmond out the door and was talking to him when she heard Mr Steffanio Lieghio fighting with his sister. Mr Lieghio then passed them by, but then he came back and said: "What did you say about me?"
Mr Redmond said: "Nothing, I was just talking to this girl here." But Mr Lieghio started hitting him. "He hit him with his fist and he caught him in the corner of his eye", she said. "He was bleeding and his glasses fell off." Mr Mahony said Mr Lieghio then ran back to his house and returned with a knife. Mr Mahony said he ran upstairs in his own house and got an iron bar.
"He put the knife up to my girlfriend's throat, like", he told the court. He said he chased Mr Lieghio from the house.
Mr Comyn told the jury that during that incident garda∅ were called, but they were fobbed off by all involved.
In her evidence Mr Mahony's daughter said that some time after the garda∅ left, Mr Redmond knocked on the door of the house.
Repeatedly breaking down in the witness stand, the girl told the court: "He asked me if I had a glass bottle. I asked him what did he want it for. He said he was going to set the house on fire. He asked me was there any children in the house and I told him I didn't know, but I told him there was an old lady and a boy of my age in the house."
Asked if he said anything else, the witness replied: "He asked me to promise to say that we never had this conversation."
Cross-examined by Mr Hugh Harnett SC, defending, the girl agreed that earlier that night Mr Redmond had been crying when he spoke to her about her grandmother's death, and that he appeared drunk and was "rabbiting on about things".
She also agreed that when Mr Redmond asked her if there were children in the Lieghios' house, another young girl in the house answered him "No, they're usually up in Lorraine's house." The jury has heard that Lorraine is another member of the Lieghio family.
The prosecution case is that Mr Redmond went home and assembled a petrol-bomb and then returned to the house in Buttercup Park with the petrol-bomb, lit it and threw it into the kitchen. Mr Comyn said that despite courageous efforts by neighbours and family, Adam Lieghio died of smoke and gas inhalation.
Mr Mahony said that when he got into the house there was smoke everywhere. "I tried to go up the stairs, but I got burned. I couldn't see, I couldn't breathe, I had to come back out again."
The case continues today.