A teenager accused of murder may have been secretly doped minutes before allegedly stabbing his neighbour to death, it was suggested in court yesterday.
At the trial of the 16-year-old at Downpatrick Crown Court, defence QC, Mr Charles Adair, asked one witness if anything had been "popped into his [the defendant's] drink for a bit of a laugh" while he was at the toilet. She denied this, replying: "It's not very nice. I would not do that."
However, while under cross-examination from Mr Adair, she admitted she was aware that all of the people at the party had been involved in drugs in the past but added that she "did not have a clue" what the others had taken.
She agreed that the teenager was behaving in an "extremely irrational and unusual" way when he was trying to goad and "wind-up" his alleged victim, 27-year-old George McClune, by "chatting up" his former partner at the house party on Bangor's Breezemount housing estate on November 18th, 2001.
The Bangor schoolboy, who cannot be identified because of his age, denies stabbing Mr McClune to death. The court has already heard that the teenager was "put out" of the house because of his behaviour but that he called back a short time later, allegedly asking Mr McClune to come outside for a fight.
It is the Crown's case that, when Mr McClune went outside, the schoolboy armed himself with two kitchen knives and stabbed his alleged victim once in the chest.
Earlier, the witness told prosecution QC, Mr Patrick Lynch, that she followed Mr McClune outside and saw the alleged fight.
Later, Mr McClune's former partner also agreed with Mr Adair's suggestion that, after about an hour in her house, "he [the defendant] started to act in a totally irrational and unreasonable way" and seemed to be "really angry and aggressive and wanting to fight people".