Stab victim's ex-partner says he was violent towards her
The ex-partner of a fatal stab victim told a court he was often violent towards her, and that he also had a fight with the defendant weeks before the killing.
Anne Gildea was giving evidence at the Central Criminal Court in the trial of a 19-year-old Louth man accused of murdering the father-of-two.
Keith Cunningham of Halpin’s Terrace, Drogheda has pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to the manslaughter of Martin Desmond Kimmins (41), whose child the teenager was babysitting.
Mr Kimmins, also known as Des, was stabbed in the chest on December 30, 2007 outside his children’s home in Rathmullen Park, Drogheda.
Ms Gildea had two daughters with the deceased, and had been separated from him for more than three years when he died.
She agreed with Derek Kenneally SC, defending, that she had reported Mr Kimmins’ violence and aggression to gardai on a number of occasions, and that he had been arrested.
She also agreed that there were occasions she did not report, including a night Mr Kimmins removed a window from its frame to get into her house, went into her room and turned over the bed in which she was sleeping.
A number of gardaí gave evidence that Ms Gildea was at her house, when they arrived to the stabbing in the early hours of that Sunday.
However, she told the jury she couldn’t remember anything between ordering a pint earlier that night and waking up in hospital the following morning with a busted nose and swollen face.
The mother-of-two said she already knew before she went drinking that she sometimes blacks out after consuming alcohol.
Earlier, she recalled an incident between Mr Cunningham and the deceased a couple of months before the killing. She said Mr Cunningham intervened when Mr Kimmins became aggressive with a visitor for putting his coat over Mr Kimmins’ sleeping child.
The trial continues.
