A man stabbed his uncle to death as revenge for the alleged sexual abuse he suffered at his hands, a court heard yesterday.
Barrister Mr Ken McMahon, prosecuting, told Downpatrick Crown Court that in October 2001, Mr Thomas Ian McQuade (31) stabbed his uncle Mr Joseph McQuade (59) to death in the living room of his Magherascouse Road home in Ballygowan before handing himself into police.
The accused denies the charge of murder.
As Mr McQuade stood at the inquiry desk at Newtownards police station, his hands covered in blood, he produced a knife and told police he had "stabbed his uncle" claiming: "He ruined my life so I ruined his."
Officers were sent to the house and after breaking the door down, they found his uncle lying dead in the living room with his throat cut and six or seven stab wounds to his back and chest.
Mr McMahon told the jury that earlier that day the accused had been watching the news when it was reported that a paedophile had been sent to prison for two years for molesting an eight-year-old child.
Mr Thomas McQuade, from Shackleton Walk in the West Winds estate in Newtownards, told police that the news report "just got to him" and "brought back memories of when he was abused by his uncle when he was eight".
A neighbour gave him and his father's common-law wife, Ms Laura Morrison, a lift to his uncle's house but, said Mr McMahon, "they knew nothing of his intention and played no part" in the attack.
During police interviews, he claimed that his uncle would wake him up in the night then rape him and further claimed that it happened a "whole lot of times".
Mr McQuade told the officers that he had reported the alleged abuse five or six years beforehand but nothing had come of it.
Mr Raymond Cavanagh said Mr McQuade had asked him for a lift and told him to wait outside his uncle's house saying he would only be "five minutes".
"I don't think he was even five minutes," he told the court, adding that Mr McQuade appeared "calm and collected" throughout the journey.
Mr Cavanagh told the jury that when Mr McQuade and Ms Morrison came back out, Ms Morrison started crying and "kept repeating - he killed that man".
In Mr McQuade's step-mother's statement, she described how Joseph was watching TV with the accused standing behind him when he "pulled a knife out and started to stab Joseph".
She told police that when he started to attack his uncle with the knife.
"I heard him say 'you are a paedophile'," adding that she did not hear his victim say anything, "not even a moan or a groan".
The trial continues.