Woman said she thought murder accused 'talking crap' when he reportedly said he threw man down a rubbish chute
A young woman laughed when a man – now on trial for murder – allegedly told her he hit a man a couple of punches and threw him down a rubbish chute.
“I laughed and thought he was just drunk and talking crap,” Mary Kate Fitzgerald said.
This evidence was put before Ms Justice Tara Burns and a jury of seven women and five men at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork in the trial of David O’Loughlin, 31, with an address at Garden City Apartments, North Main Street, Cork.
He denies murdering Liam Manley, 59, at Garden City Apartments on May 12 2013.
Mary Kate Fitzgerald and her friend Jessica Lowther visited the apartment of the accused man on the morning of Sunday May 12 2015. They were not required to give evidence from the witness box.
Instead their original statements to gardaí were admitted and read to the jury by prosecution senior counsel Patrick McGrath.
Jessica Lowther said she was at a house party in Fairhill on Saturday night/ Sunday morning May 11/12, 2015 and was in a bedroom as her friend Mary Fitzgerald was talking to Locky (David O’Laughlin’s nickname).
Ms Lowther said she heard a male voice saying: “Mary, now is not a good time. I am just after f***ing someone down a drainpipe. Mary started laughing. I was thinking, how could you f*** someone down a drainpipe.
“He kept saying, Mary, Mary. He sounded very drunk. Mary was calling him Locky.”
Mary was concerned about a young man who got drunk and fell asleep in a bed in David O’Loughlin’s bedroom that morning so she and Ms Lowther went down to see that he was alright.
They arrived after 7am and were buzzed in and went up the lift to apartment 10 on the fourth floor.
There was another young man in the apartment whom she knew only as Mahony and she said: “He stated Locky hit a fella a dig and f***ed him down the rubbish chute.
"I could see a lot of spatters of blood on the wall. Mahony was saying the fella was a kiddy-fiddler. He would not say what he was talking about, that it was too sick.
“(When asked if the man was OK) Locky replied, I shook his hand and walked him home. He is fine," Ms Lowther said.
Later, on her way down the lift to get alcohol, she said the man she knew as Mahony repeated: “The fella was a kiddy-fiddler. Locky hit him a dig and f***ed him down the chute.”
Ms Fitzgerald stated in relation to her phone conversation: “Locky was laughing and joking and seemed in great form.”
Later in the apartment she said Locky and Mahony were “talking about a kiddy-fiddler.”
She said there was blood spattered on the wall by the couch.
While in the apartment she went to wash some clothes and opened the washing machine to find pillowcases and towels stained with blood and unwashed. She said, “What the f***, Locky?” And he did not reply.
She said that Mahony claimed the older man they were talking about claimed to be a paedophile but she asked why would he say that and put himself in danger.
She said “Locky changed his story” in the course of the morning. She concluded by saying, “Locky kept saying ‘I’ as in just him putting the man down the chute.”
The trial goes into its seventh day tomorrow.
