Cocaine taken on night of murder, jury told
Cocaine and champagne were consumed by New Years Eve revellers the night a man was murdered at Jurys Inn Hotel, Croke Park, a court has heard.
Karl Breen, 27, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his friend Martin McLaughlin but he has admitted stabbing him three times during a row at the hotel in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2006.
Mr McLaughlin, aged 21, who was from Clondalkin was celebrating New Years with Breen, who has an address at Kearns Court, Kilmainham, their girlfriends and three other couples. Mr McLaughlin died in Mater Hospital on January 2.
The Central Criminal Court heard Breen changed his shirt and left the hotel following the stabbing, checking himself in to the Red Cow Hotel on January 1 and 2.
Breen handed himself into Garda on January 3.
Mr Justice Kevin O’Reilly and the jury of 10 men and three women were read Breen’s statements by Mr Brendan Grehan SC for the director of public prosecutions.
Breen said, Mr McLaughlin’s girlfriend, Elaine Fagan, started the fight adding she was on drugs that night and had taken cocaine along with two others from the group who had all been drinking Moet and Chandon and Bud beer.
He said the fight was about, two stolen cars.
“She was picking on him all night she was but it’s irrelevant now,” Breen told Detective Sergeant Garda Gerry McDonald.
Breen said he had known Mr McLaughlin for about four or five years and was upset about the death of one of his best mates.
“Elaine was high on drugs,” he said, saying she and two others had done cocaine that night.
“I live in a drug culture you know when someone is on drugs,” he said.
Miss Fagan had been arguing with Mr McLaughlin all night because two cars had gone missing, one of them her aunties, and Mr McLaughlin had paid €4000 to get them back the night before New Year’s Eve, he said.
But that was not enough, he said, Elaine also wanted to know who had taken them.
She said Elaine had been asking for “a line or two of coke,” all night.
When asked why he had tried to run after the stabbing he said; “if I was trying to run I’d be in Spain, yet I brought myself in here.”
Dr James Maloney examined Breen at Mt Joy Garda Station where the interviews took place.
He told the court Breen had bruising to his upper lip consistent with blunt force trauma and three small scabs on his front left shoulder although under cross examination by Breen’s counsel Mr Michael O’Higgins SC, Dr Maloney said the photos taken of Breen at the time and given to the jury did not show the full extent of the bruising on his lip.
The trial continues on Monday.
