A murder trial witness has described how he and his friends told a former soldier they loved him and how he died as they tried to make him blink just minutes after he was fatally stabbed on a roadway.
Gary Watson (35) is on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of murdering Warren O’Connor (24) in north Dublin nine years ago.
Mr Watson, with an address at Millbrook Avenue, Kilbarrack, Dublin 13 has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr O’Connor at Hole in the Wall Road, Donaghmede, Dublin 13 on January 16th, 2010.
Mr Watson also denies assaulting Philip Woodcock (34) causing him harm on the same occasion and producing a knife to intimidate another person in the course of a dispute.
Giving evidence on Wednesday, Mr Woodcock told prosecution counsel James Dwyer SC that he had lived at Grattan Wood apartment complex on the Hole in the Wall Road with his heavily pregnant former partner, Suzanne Martin and his son on the date in question.
The apprentice electrician said he had been a soldier for five years prior to this event.
Mr Woodcock said he heard male voices shouting and roaring as they were going past his apartment door on the evening of January 15th. He later heard music and a lot of noise coming from the apartment next door around 11pm that night, which belonged to his neighbour Louise Kinsella.
“It was going on sporadically for about an hour and a half,” he said, adding that this had been happening quite frequently for the past few weeks.
Mr Woodcock went downstairs and took the fuse out in order to cut the power in the building so the noisy people would leave. He then went to the local garage and when he was there Ms Martin rang him to tell him that the noise from the party was getting louder and they were looking to see who had cut the power.
Mr Woodcock picked his friend Jonathan Gunnery up at his apartment and told him what was happening. The witness then rang two other friends, Richard Grant and the deceased Warren O’Connor, and told them there was a group of men in his apartment block and he thought they may be waiting for him. He collected these two men as well as another man, Graham Hogan from Santry Stadium and drove the four men back to his apartment complex.
There was still noise coming from Ms Kinsella’s apartment when they arrived back so he told his friends to wait in the corridor while he knocked on her door. “I banged on the door and everything went quiet,” he said, adding that the door swung open a few minutes later and three men were standing there with “big kitchen knives”.
Mr Woodcock testified that one of the men was close to six foot in height and was wearing a Russell Athletic hoody. Warren O’Connor and this man were talking to each other, trying to diffuse the situation.
“I was saying ‘let’s go, let’s leave’,” said Mr Woodcock, adding that the man in the Russell Athletic hoody then hit him with the top of his head. “I punched him and he fell to the ground,” said the witness, adding that he got up a few minutes later.
Mr Woodcock and his friends waited for the other group to leave the building before they all went to the carpark. The other men were in a Honda Civic car which was parked outside and they began shouting and making threats at Mr Woodcock and his friends.
As Mr Woodcock was walking towards his car, the Honda Civic reversed and tried to run him over. The witness said he kicked the back of the car before it drove off.
Collision
Mr Woodcock said he drove his car towards the gate of the apartment block and the Honda Civic pulled up behind it. The Honda Civic tried to overtake his car on the main road and then “rammed” into the driver’s side of the car a few times. “I lost control of the car, we both collided and both cars cut out,” he said.
Mr Woodcock and his friends got out of his car and he handed a small knife, which he had used to cut the steel on the fuse box, to Jonathan Gunnery saying: “If any of these have knives look out for us.”
The witness ran towards the Civic car and started to hit the driver. Mr Woodcock testified that he saw the man with the Russell Athletic jumper run up behind him with a kitchen knife in his hand. Mr Woodcock caught this man with a punch at the same time as the man stabbed him in the left shoulder.
“I was screaming at the others to get back into the car as I was after getting stabbed,” he said.
Graham Hogan shouted at Mr Woodcock that Warren O’Connor had after got “knocked out” as he was face down on the ground. The witness drove his car down the road and turned him over. He saw Mr O’Connor had been stabbed.
“He was bleeding from his chest but he was still alive. He put his hand up and shook Richard’s hand. We were all talking to him, telling him we loved him. We tried to make him blink but he didn’t blink, he just died,” Mr Woodcock told the jury.
The court heard that Warren O’Connor still had part of the knife inside him. “Half an inch of the knife was sticking out of his body, the handle was gone,” sobbed Mr Woodcock. Two cars drove by and one of the cars beeped and cheered, he concluded.
The trial continues on Thursday before Mr Justice Michael White and a jury of seven men and five women. It is expected to last over two weeks.