The widow of a Limerick bouncer shot dead five years ago has told the jury in the trial of four men accused of her husband's killing at the Central Criminal Court that she saw her husband struggling with a man wearing a motorcycle helmet.
Gary Campion (24) of Pineview Gardens, Moyross, Limerick, John Dundon (27) and Desmond Dundon (23) both from Ballinacurra Weston, Co. Limerick and Clare business man Anthony Kelly (50) with an address at Killrush all plead not guilty to murdering 34-year-old Brian Fitzgerald, on November 29th, 2002, at Brookhaven Walk, Mill Road, Corbally, Limerick.
Alice Fitzgerald told prosecuting counsel that on the night he died, Brian Fitzgerald had left for work, as usual, at about 8.10pm. He was head of security in a Limerick nightclub. Before he left he bathed the couple's two young children and stayed with them until they fell asleep.
Ms Fitzgerald said her husband usually got home at about 3.10am. At about 2am she got up to give one of the children a bottle and stayed awake to wait for her husband.
Mr Fitzgerald was late home and she presumed he had been delayed talking to one of his employees. At about 3.50am she heard the car and a short while later heard the door open.
She started coming downstairs but heard four shots and the sound of glass breaking. She said she heard her husband shout: "Come on ye c***s."
As she ran down the stairs she could see her husband fighting with a man in a motorcycle helmet through the glass panel in the front door. As she watched her husband looked at her through the glass.
She ran back upstairs to phone the gardaí but couldn't get her phone to work so she came back downstairs. She used the house phone to call the gardaí and was looking out of the window as she talked.
"As I was looking out there was a guy standing directly outside the window."
She told the court he was a thin built man wearing a motorcycle helmet. She could only see the second man's legs as he was blocked by the car but could see he was a "big, fat, stocky guy".
The witness said she was using the cordless house phone and looking out of the window as she talked. One of the men was standing directly outside and she rapped on the window with the phone. He looked at her and she could see his face. "He had very shiny eyes and his eyebrows they met," she said, "They were jet, jet black."
She said the man muttered something and "took off". As they left she saw that one of the men was limping. She went outside the house and looked in the car. "I don't know what I thought. I just looked in the [car] to see if he was there." Ms Fitzgerald said that she initially thought the two men had abducted her husband.
In his opening statement, prosecuting counsel Denis Vaughan Buckley, told the jury the main prosecution witness James Martin Cahill had pleaded guilty to the actually committing the murder but would say that the four accused had taken part in the planning and execution of the offence.
The trial continues at the Central Criminal Court sitting at Cloverhill in Dublin before Mr Justice Peter Charleton and a jury.