A WOMAN called a taxi driver and said “get me out of here” hours before her battered body was discovered in a pool of blood in her home.
Catherine Smart (57) of Bailick Court in Midleton, Co Cork, died of multiple head injuries inflicted with a hurley stick on Easter Sunday morning, April 4th, 2010.
At an inquest into her death yesterday, driver Tony Bailey told how he received three calls from Ms Smart in the hours before she died.
“She said ‘can you get me out of here’ and then something about being on the floor, then the call was disconnected,” Mr Bailey said.
In a follow-up call, Ms Smart told Mr Bailey she was “very nervous, get me out of here” before making a third and final call during which she did not communicate but was described as “hysterical”.
Two hours later, at 9.36am gardaí discovered Ms Smart’s body face down in a pool of blood among shards of broken glass.
At Midleton District Court, coroner Frank O’Connell heard how the woman had called gardaí at 4.20 that morning, complaining that her partner, Derrick Daly (47) from Douglas Street in Cork, had locked her out of her house.
Ms Smart, a separated mother of three, told gardaí he had been living with her for the past 18 months and she had “given him her last penny”.
“She said: ‘I had to borrow money because I gave him my last penny’,” Garda Michelle O’Connell said in a statement.
Just over four hours later, at 9.24am Derrick Daly made a 999 call.
“He said, ‘I tried to get into the front room but there is a pair of legs blocking the door,” Det Insp Brian Goulding told the inquest.
In her postmortem examination, State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy found Ms Smart had been subjected to a violent assault.
She suffered multiple blunt force trauma injuries, including 10 lacerations to her head and her scalp.
The woman’s hands and wrists bore wounds consistent with self defence.
During forensic examinations of the house, gardaí found a broken hurley stained with Ms Smart’s blood.
Mr Daly was found not guilty of her murder but guilty of manslaughter by a jury at the Central Criminal Court last June. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Det Insp Goulding told the inquest that Mr Daly has never admitted inflicting the fatal blows that killed his partner.
The jury returned a narrative verdict, that Ms Smart died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head caused by a known person using a hurley stick to inflict blows.
Coroner Frank O’Connell and gardaí extended sympathies to Ms Smart’s younger sister Ann Vaughan, who was present in court yesterday.