THE HOUSE where a Limerick man was shot dead four years ago had been shot at twice shortly before the killing, the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.
Noel Crawford was killed in the early hours of his 40th birthday outside his parents’ home in O’Malley Park, Limerick. “Life begins at 40,” he had joked to a friend shortly beforehand.
However, that same friend and neighbour, David Duggan, told the court that O’Malley Park was “like the Wild West”. It was not uncommon for shots to be fired in the air there, he said, and he was not immediately concerned when he heard the fatal gunshot.
Mr Duggan was giving evidence on the second day of the trial of a 21-year-old man charged with murdering the 40-year-old on December 18th, 2006.
Jonathan Fitzgerald of South Claughan Road, Garryowen, has pleaded not guilty to his murder.
One of the victim’s six brothers and two of his six sisters also gave evidence. His brother, Paul Crawford, was standing outside their parents’ porch with the victim at 2.30am that Monday, moments before he was shot dead.
“We were chatting. Noel was having a can,” he said.
He said his [Paul Crawford’s] phone rang in his bedroom and he went upstairs to answer it.
“I answered the phone. It just went off,” he recalled. “I heard two bangs within seconds. I knew it was gunshots. I looked out the window. I saw a guy walking down the road. He had a hood on his head. There was something in his hand.” Mr Crawford testified that he told this person he was “a big man” before racing downstairs.
“When I got to the door, Noel just fell in on top of me,” he said.
Mr Crawford did not reply when he was asked by Úna Ní Raifeartaigh SC, prosecuting, if he had known Jonathan Fitzgerald previously.
He agreed with Brian McInerney defending, that after his brother was shot he “went off for a spin” with a number of people, some of whom are now in jail for serious and violent crimes.
He agreed that he and one of these men must have got out of the car at the top of the hill as a garda had said so.
However, he didn’t recall any shots being fired at a house there.
The court has already heard that this was the house of the chief prosecution witness and also the house where gardaí found Mr Fitzgerald hours later. Mr Crawford also agreed that among his previous convictions was a threat to kill or cause serious harm.
“That would have been after my brother was murdered. I had an argument with someone,” he said.
Asked if that was the same reaction he had when he went to the house on the hill and shot in the windows, he replied: “I wasn’t there.”
Mr Crawford said he wasn’t a criminal and didn’t associate with dangerous criminals. He said he didn’t think either his own or his brother’s life was in danger after the windows in their parents’ house were shot twice.
Ann Crawford testified that she left her brother, Noel, with her children in her now-demolished house about 10 o’clock on the Sunday night while she went to watch a film in a neighbour’s home.
Earlier in the evening, the deceased and some others had been out at her gate watching a stolen car being driven around the green.
She said that when she heard the bangs around 3am, she rang Noel’s mobile and that it must have automatically answered as he fell.
She heard her sister, Olivia, screaming in the background that their brother had been shot.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of five women and seven men and is expected to last up to three weeks.