Woman ‘feared for her life when she faked housemate’s suicide’

A woman told gardaí that she was in fear for her life when she simulated the suicide of her housemate on the orders of her housemate’s killer.

The 34-year-old woman is on trial at the Central Criminal Court, charged with impeding the apprehension or prosecution of a man, knowing or believing him to have murdered Antra Ozolina (49) or committed some other arrestable offence.

It is alleged that the woman, Egita Jaunmaize, placed a blue cord around Ms Ozolina's neck so as to simulate her suicide, in order to make it more difficult to establish that her death was suspicious.

The accused, of no fixed abode, has pleaded not guilty to carrying out the offence at her former home at The Old Post, Main Street, Kilnaleck, Co Cavan, on or about June 27th or June 28th, 2014. However, she accepts that Ms Ozolina’s death was not caused by suicide and does not dispute that another named person caused it.

Det Gerard Shaughnessy gave evidence on Thursday of interviews conducted with the accused after the alleged incident.

She told gardaí there had been a row in the house between her and the deceased in the presence of the killer on the night of June 27th. This man left, she said, and she went to bed.

However, she said she then woke to screaming and found this man assaulting Ms Ozolina in the deceased woman's room.

“I tried to push him away but couldn’t,” she said. “He punched me in the stomach.”

She said that he continued to assault her housemate.

“He was choking her,” she said. “I heard her making a noise from her mouth. I asked what it was.”

She said that he replied that it was “a dead person’s noise”.

“I screamed: ‘I’m not going to prison because of you. I will tell gardaí. I have a child.’ He grabbed me by my neck.

“I was so afraid if I go to gardaí he will kill me too.”

“He said we need to set it up as if she done it herself,” she said. “He got a rope. He said to me to put it on . . . I was forced to do it.”

Held up

She told gardaí that the man held the deceased up so that she could put the rope over her head.

“He did the rest himself,” she said.

She said she remembered very little after that as she was in shock.

She said that the man woke her the next morning, and asked if she knew what had happened.

“At first I didn’t, as I was still in a state of shock,” she said.

She said that she eventually agreed with his plan to tell gardaí that her housemate had hanged herself.

The court heard she kept to this line during a number of voluntary statements and in her first interview as a suspect, even suggesting that her housemate had given herself the injuries found in an autopsy.

The statements of other witnesses were then put to her by gardaí, including one from a friend whom the deceased had rung earlier on the night of June 27th to say she was in fear and was going to ring the Garda.

The accused eventually agreed that she was under the duress of the man, whom she described as a “skinhead neo-Nazi”.

Mr Shaughnessy said that the accused was released from custody following a number of interviews.

He recalled that he was driving in Cavan town a few days later when he saw two people sitting together on a bench. He said he recognised them as the accused and the alleged killer.

The trial continues before Judge Patrick McCarthy and a jury of seven men and five women.