A murder trial jury has heard a recording of a 999 call in which the accused is alleged to have told emergency services that he and his friend had been attacked by two men who were trying to kill them.
Andrew Lacey denies murdering Derek Reddin during a fight involving four men in Dublin in 2019.
Aidan Bryan on Wednesday told prosecution counsel Roisin Lacey SC that he was working on the Dublin Garda emergency line when he received a call shortly after midnight on October 15th, 2019, from a man who identified himself as Andrew Lacey. Mr Bryan said there was “a bit of panic on the line” and the caller said that he and a friend were “being followed by two males attacking them and one had a baseball bat and the other had a knife”.
The audio from the call was played to the jury in which the caller asked for police and said: “Two people are after attacking me with a baseball bat and a knife.” He added that “two men were trying to kill us” and said he thought one of them was Derek Reddin.
The caller said he was “worried sick”, that he didn’t know if they were “going to try and kill us again” and he said one of the attackers was lying on the ground. He added: “The guy on the floor is one of the guys who attacked me coming home from the pub. I don’t know what’s going on.”
‘No weapons’
Mr Bryan alerted gardaí and transferred the call back to an operator to connect the caller to the ambulance service. In her opening speech to the jury, Ms Lacey said that during the period when the caller was on hold he could be heard saying to his friend: “What will we do, they jumped on us, yeah. We had no weapons, we were eating from the chipper around the corner.”
The prosecution alleges that Mr Reddin was in Loughlinstown to have a fight with Andrew Lacey.
Ms Lacey said there will be evidence that there had for some time been animosity and feuding between associates of both men. Counsel said self-defence may be an issue in the trial but the prosecution case “in a nutshell” is that the accused knowingly used more force than was reasonably necessary. Mr Lacey (35) of Riverside, Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Derek Reddin (31) at Loughlinstown Drive on a date unknown between October 14th and October 15th, 2019, both dates inclusive.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring and a jury.