A “LIFE-LONG friend” of a teenager accused of shooting dead his neighbour has told his murder trial that the dead man had threatened to kill the teenager, who stole a gun and shot him.
Veronica Glynn said Conor Duffy (18) arrived at her house in East Wall, Dublin, in December 2008, shortly after Aidan O’Kane had been shot.
He was in a panicked state and gasping for breath “as if he had ran for dear life”. She said he kept mumbling “I shouldn’t have done it, I didn’t mean it”. She then got a phone call to say a man had been shot in the area, and she guessed it had something to do with why Mr Duffy was upset.
Mr Duffy asked if he could have a shower and then rang a friend to come to the house. When his friend arrived, Mr Duffy gave him a bag of clothes asking him to get rid of them. The friend also went to get the gun and hide it somewhere.
Ms Glynn (22) said Mr Duffy then told her he had had an argument with Mr O’Kane (50), his neighbour.
Mr Duffy said he had been “fighting with Mr O’Kane for quite some time” and the mechanic had “threatened to kill him”. He became afraid that evening when he saw Mr O’Kane wearing a balaclava and with something in his jacket that he thought he was going to take out and use to kill him.
“Conor got afraid . . . he went and robbed a gun because he thought Mr O’Kane was going to kill him,” the witness said. Mr Duffy also said he thought he had only shot Mr O’Kane in the leg.
On the day following the shooting, Ms Glynn said Mr Duffy told her he was going to hand himself up to gardaí, but moments after this conversation gardaí arrived and arrested them both.
Mr Duffy, of St Mary’s Road, East Wall, is pleading not guilty to murdering Mr O’Kane who died after he was shot once in the chest.
He has also denied charges of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition and having a firearm without a licence.
The court has previously heard that Mr O’Kane had been harassed for months prior to his death by groups of local teenagers who would taunt him and throw eggs at his house.
On the evening of December 7th, 2008, after his house had again been hit by eggs, he decided to confront the youths and changed into a biker jacket, balaclava and armed himself with a retractable baton.
When he emerged from the house, people started screaming that he had a gun. He ran at one group of youths, and then Mr Duffy appeared on a bike.
A witness told the trial that Mr Duffy began to zig-zag slowly in front of Mr O’Kane, who appeared to be getting frustrated. Someone shouted at Mr Duffy to run, so he jumped off the bike and ran down a laneway off Bargy Road, with Mr O’Kane in pursuit. Then there was a loud bang.
Det Sgt Walter O’Connell told the court that another young witness told gardaí he had seen Mr Duffy with a gun in his hand, and had then seen him pointing the gun and shooting Mr O’Kane before sprinting away.
The witness also said Mr O’Kane had a knife in his hands before he fell to the ground.
In his direct evidence to the court, however, the 15-year-old witness said he did not really remember “any of it”.
The trial resumes today.