NEWS: Eire ambulance crew feared for safety, murder trial hears
Blippie
today how they feared for their own safety while tending to a stabbing
victim at a house in Galway two years ago.
Denis O'Neill of the University College Hospital Galway ambulance crew, told
the court how he and his partner, Jimmy Lawless, locked themselves into a
kitchen while tending to stabbing victim Patrick Shaughnessy after they
overheard a man's voice saying "I'll cut you to pieces" outside the kitchen
door.
Mr Lawless also testified to hearing a man's voice threatening to cut
someone "into pieces". "We believed there could have been another incident
if we didn't lock the doors," Mr Lawless told the court.
He told how a tall man then came to a broken window of the utility room and
enquired "how's the patient?".
"I told him that the gardaí were on their way and that we were waiting
inside until the gardaí came," said Mr Lawless.
When the ambulance crew first arrived at the scene they saw two men outside,
"one in his 50s, tall, another was smaller," according to Mr O'Neill.
"It looked as if the small guy was trying to calm the larger man down," he
said.
He said he found the deceased man lying on the kitchen floor inside, "face
blue", with "no breathing, no pulse and his eyes were fixed and dilated. We
knew that he was brain-dead at that stage," said Mr Lawless.
The two emergency medical technicians were giving evidence on the first day
of the murder trial of Michael Reilly, aged 52, of Corrach Bui, Rahoon,
Galway.
Mr Reilly has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Patrick Shaughnessy, aged
28, of Coogan Park, Galway, at his home at Corrach Bui on May 25 2002.
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