THE JURY in the trial of a man charged with murdering Limerick rugby player Shane Geoghegan has heard from the mother of the defendant’s daughter.
Victoria Gunnery told the Central Criminal Court that in 2007 she and Barry Doyle had a baby. He moved from Dublin to Limerick in 2008, but they stayed in touch.
Mr Doyle (24), with addresses at Portland Row, Dublin, and Hyde Road, Limerick, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Geoghegan (28) on November 9th, 2008. He was shot dead in a suspected case of mistaken identity across the road from his home in Clonmore, Kilteragh, Dooradoyle.
Ms Gunnery told the prosecution that Mr Doyle texted her at about 8pm on Saturday, November 8th, to say he was going to turn his phone off, that he had something to do.
She said that when he turned his phone back on at about 1.30am, she texted him to see why he had to turned it off.
“He told me to read the teletext in the morning,” she said.
She did this and learned that a man had been shot in Limerick.
“I called him a scumbag,” she said.
“So you read the teletext,” he replied, the court was told.
She said that a few days later he went to Turkey for a couple of weeks and rang her from there.
“He asked me what were the newspapers saying about the murder in Limerick,” she said.
“I said: ‘They know it’s you because they say it’s a very close associate of Patrick Doyle’,” she said, referring to the defendant’s brother.
“He said they had no proof,” she continued.
She collected him at the airport on his return to Ireland at about Christmas, and he stayed with her in her sister’s home.
She said they had a discussion about the incident on the way to a chip shop. “When I asked him questions, I never mentioned the name or said ‘murder’,” she said.
“I asked him: ‘What do you think about what you did?’
He said: ‘I don’t think about it,’” she continued.
“I just said to him: ‘That was an innocent man.’
“He said: ‘If it wasn’t an innocent man there wouldn’t be so much hype.’”
Ms Gunnery agreed with the defence that gardaí arrested her at her home on February 24th, 2009, and questioned her at Ballymun and Limerick Garda stations over three days. She agreed it was distressing to be away from her child.
“I just wanted to get home to her,” she said.
She agreed that she thought Mr Doyle had another girlfriend in Limerick, that her communication with him was abusive and she often called him a scumbag.
She agreed that they used to fight when she was drunk, that it would get “very heated” and that he would turn off his phone.
She said Mr Doyle had never admitted his involvement in Mr Geoghegan’s death to her and that she was satisfied that he was not involved.
“If I thought that I would never have anything got to do with him,” she said. “I thought it was all false bravado.”
State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy also gave evidence yesterday.
She said Mr Geoghegan died of gunshots to his back and trunk. He sustained five gunshot wounds in all, including one to the back of the head and one to the back of his shoulder.
She said the different trajectories of the five gunshot wounds confirmed that one or both parties were moving.
The trial before Mr Justice Paul Carney will enter legal argument on Monday, and the jury of seven men and five women will not be present for a number of days.