Boy tells trial he let brothers into his house and saw them attack victim

AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy yesterday told a court how he let two men into his family home and then followed them to his sister’s bedroom where he saw them attack a 30-year-old man who subsequently died from his injuries.

The boy, who can’t be named for legal reasons, told the trial of brothers Gerard and Shane O’Riordan how he had been at home in Pinewood Estate, Killarney, Co Kerry, at about 2am on April 15th, 2007, when he heard a knock at the window. Shane O’Riordan (19) and Gerard O’Riordan (28) from Arbutus Grove, Killarney, were outside.

Shane asked him who was in the house and he told him that his mother, his two sisters and one of their friends were there along with Englishman James Brazier.

The boy, who was giving evidence on the third day of the trial of the two men for the murder of Mr Brazier, said he opened the front door and and they went straight to the room of his then 15-year-old sister. The jury at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork had already heard that Shane O’Riordan, then 17, had been going out with the then 15-year-old girl but that they had split up some days earlier. The boy said he followed the brothers to his sister’s room where he saw Shane O’Riordan’s hand going up and down over Mr Brazier and he saw Gerard O’Riordan pull Mr Brazier from the bed.

“Ger pulled Jimmy off the bed and he was kicking him and stuff – there was a chair and Ger was hitting yer man on the head with the chair and my mother tried to stop, him,” the boy told the trial.

The case continues.