A 22-year-old Co Carlow man who admits stabbing a teenage father-of-one has told a jury that he thought the youth had a knife behind his back and that he was going to stab him or his mother.
John Dillon (22), of Granby Row, Carlow, denies a charge of murdering Warren Slater (17) outside a house at Granby Row, Carlow, on May 13th, 2001.
Warren Slater lived with his girlfriend, Ms Louise Heary, and their six-month old baby in a downstairs bedsit of the same house in which John Dillon lived with his mother, Noeleen, and his sister, Cathy. The jury has heard that, a "couple of weeks" before the stabbing, Slater allegedly "tried to rape" the accused man's mother.
Giving evidence in his own defence yesterday in the Central Criminal Court trial, Mr Dillon told his counsel, Mr Patrick J. McCarthy SC, that the stabbing arose after Ms Heary "insisted" that he go with her to a house across the road where she was to try to get her boyfriend to come home.
Mr Dillon said that when Warren Slater emerged from the house, a "shouting match" developed between the couple. Then, when Warren Slater saw him, "he kind of started with me straight away then, because of what happened with him and my mother".
He said that Warren Slater was "kind of shoving me with his elbow" and saying that he, the accused, had told another person about the alleged sexual assault on his mother. Outside their own house, Warren Slater and his girlfriend were "still arguing", he said.
"Louise was telling him to stop and he didn't want to stop, he wanted to keep going at this stage, he wanted to get to me", the accused said. He said that Slater went to come at him, and Ms Heary tried to block him. The accused said that he then went into the house and picked up a knife.
"The reason I went for the knife was I thought he had a weapon. When he came at me, he had a hand behind his back, and I thought he had a knife", Mr Dillon said.
He said he was annoyed at Slater because he had accused him of something he never did - telling another person about the alleged sexual assault. "I got into an awful state of temper," he said. He could remember going into the house and going as far as the kitchen, but not anything after that. "I couldn't really recall what happened. I was in a rage at the time," he said. "I wasn't really thinking, I wasn't really thinking straight."
The accused said that when he came out of the house, Warren Slater was trying to come in.
Just before the stabbing, Warren Slater broke loose from his girlfriend and went to lunge at him, Mr Dillon said. He "swiped" at Slater with the knife and Slater came into the knife. The swipe was not meant to connect, he told counsel for the DPP, Mr Edward Comyn SC.
The trial continues before Mr Justice White and a jury.