Murder trial witness praised for coming to aid of stabbed man

A judge has praised a young woman, who came to the aid of a dying man on the street as she left work on New Year’s Eve.

Ms Justice Tara Burns commended Alannah Sheridan after the takeaway worker finished her testimony in a murder trial.

Ms Sheridan was giving evidence in the trial of Tomasz Paszkiewicz (39) who has admitted killing his housemate Marek Swider (40) with the knife he used in his job on a meat plant’s ‘kill floor’.

Mr Paszkiewicz has pleaded not guilty to the murder of fellow Polish man Mr Swider at their home on Dublin Street, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan on January 1st, 2018 but guilty to his manslaughter.

The Central Criminal Court has heard that the farm worker died of two stab wounds after a row over a poker game.

Ms Sheridan told the court the takeaway closed early so staff could ring in the new year and that she left shortly after 11pm, accepting a lift with delivery driver Paddy Dunne.

She told Seán Guerin SC, prosecuting, that Mr Dunne told her that he had seen a man stumbling outside and that he thought he was drunk. She asked if the man had fallen and Mr Dunne confirmed he had.

“When we got into the car, I told him pull in, that I wanted to check the man,” she said, explaining that she had first aid training and had been with the Order of Malta for five years.

Ms Sheridan recalled that the man was lying on his left-hand side outside a row of houses.

‘Wound’

“I knelt down beside him and there were a few men around him. I asked had he whacked his head. They said he’d been stabbed,” she said, saying she saw a hole in his top. “When I unzipped it, I could see the wound in his chest.”

She said she asked his name, but he was going in and out of consciousness.

“His eyes were open and he was just staring at me and I was trying to comfort him,” she added. “I could see he was bleeding so I just used my scarf to apply pressure to the wound on his chest.”

She said an ambulance arrived about 10 minutes later, and gardaí about five minutes after that.

Ms Justice Tara Burns said she wished to “commend” Ms Sheridan for coming to Mr Swider’s assistance and that it was ‘a shame that more of us are not trained in first aid.

Dr Linda Mulligan, the Acting State Pathologist, earlier told the court she carried out a postmortem on Mr Swider’s body on January 1st, 2018.

She told Mr Guerin that Mr Swider suffered two cardiac arrests and had a collapsed lung. Up to three litres of blood had been drained from his chest cavity, and wounds inside his abdomen had been surgically repaired, she said.

However, his condition deteriorated and he had died at 9.30am that dat.

She said that she found two stab wounds during her examination of his body. One to his chest had injured his right lung and the left lobe of the liver. It had penetrated to a depth of 15cm, but this might have been shorter in life when the lungs were inflated and the diaphragm moving, she explained.

Dr Mulligan said the other stab wound was to the abdomen, where there was a lot of damage to the mesentery. This is a vascular organ, she explained, and the wounds would have caused a lot of bleeding. She also noted a small wound on Mr Swider’s right thumb, which could have been a defense injury.

“Death was due to stab wounds to the chest and abdomen,” she concluded.

The trial continues on Monday.