A 25-YEAR-OLD Tipperary man who shot his father twice at the family home with his brother’s shotgun claims he was suffering from schizophrenia at the time, a jury at the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.
Paul Lane (25), of Ballydavid, Littleton, Co Tipperary, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of his father Michael Christopher Lane (50), also known as Christy Lane, on September 3rd, 2006.
Prosecuting counsel Michael O’Higgins SC told the jury Paul Lane had been acting strangely in the days leading up to the incident and had been exhibiting signs of anxiety. Mary Lane, the mother of the accused, found a note in her son’s bedroom a few days before the shooting in which Paul Lane alleged he had been sexually assaulted.
Mr O’Higgins said: “Mr Lane went to the Garda station the night before the incident to report a rather bizarre incident in which he alleged he was sexually assaulted on a night out in Cork city.” The court heard that on the following day, September 3rd, 2006, while his father and mother were in the living room watching the All-Ireland Minor Hurling Final, the accused went to his brother’s bedroom and retrieved the shotgun.
In a statement read out by Mr O’Higgins, Ms Lane said she heard her husband tell her son not to point a gun at someone like that and to put it down, at which point she looked up and heard a shot go off. Ms Lane said she opened the patio doors thinking her husband could run out of them and then heard a second shot.
The jury was told Paul Lane left the house by climbing out his brother’s bedroom window still carrying the shotgun in his hand.
The accused was later apprehended by gardaí over a mile from the house.
In Garda interviews read out to the court, Paul Lane said he couldn’t remember the incident and did not know why he did it.
He said: “I lost it, I don’t know what happened. I felt people were after me for a long time.” Mr Lane told gardaí he didn’t have a great relationship with his father and had been put out of the house on a number of occasions but that he still loved him.
The trial continues today.