A Co Tipperary man who shot his father twice at the family home with his brother’s shotgun claims he was suffering from schizophrenia at the time, a jury at the Central Criminal Court heard today.
Paul Lane (25) with an address at Ballydavid, Littelton, Co Tipperary, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of his father Michael Christopher Lane (50), also known as Christie Lane, on September 3rd, 2006.
Prosecuting counsel Michael O'Higgins SC told the jury Paul Lane had been acting strange in the days leading up to the incident and had been exhibiting signs of anxiety.
Mary Lane, the mother of the accused, found a note in her son's bedroom a few days before the shooting in which Paul Lane alleged he had been sexually assaulted.
Mr O'Higgins said: "Mr Lane went to the Garda station the night before the incident to report a rather bizarre incident in which he alleged he was sexually assaulted on a night out in Cork City."
The court heard that the following day on September 3rd, 2006 while his father and mother, Mary Lane, were in the living room watching the All Ireland minor hurling final, the accused went to his brother's bedroom and retrieved the shotgun.
In a statement read out by Mr O'Higgins, Mrs Lane said she heard her husband tell her son not to point a gun at someone like that and to put it down, at which point she looked up and heard a shot go off.
Mrs Lane said she opened the patio doors thinking her husband could run out of them and then heard a second shot.
The jury was told Paul Lane left the house by climbing out his brother's bedroom window still carrying the shotgun in his hand.
The accused walked down the lane and fired the gun into the air near the hedge of a neighbour's house before being apprehended by gardai nearby.
In Garda interviews read out to the court, Paul Lane said he couldn't remember the incident and did not know why he did it. "I lost it. I don't know what happened, I wish I was never born," he said. "I felt people were after me for a long time."
He added: "It wasn't me I wasn't there I'm possessed by something. It was not my body but it was my soul."
The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice George Birmingham and a jury of eight women and four men.