O’Donoghue was ‘in total shock’ after killing

MURDER accused Wayne O’Donoghue said people looking at the case from the outside would say he should have called the guards or an ambulance or his parents when he killed his 11-year-old neighbour.

But he said panic set in and he went around in a daze.

O’Donoghue, aged 21, of Ballyedmond, Midleton, made this comment to investigating detectives the day after he confessed to killing Robert Holohan, 11, last January.

He confessed to the January 4 killing on January 16. The day after, he was questioned in Midleton Garda Station. It was made clear to O’Donoghue that detectives were unhappy with some aspects of the statement that he made at his home in the course of over seven hours the previous evening.

During the question and answer session on January 17, he described throwing water on Robert Holohan’s face after he carried his body into the bathroom of the O’Donoghue house. He was hoping it might revive him. “There was nothing. Lifeless like,” he said.

“I lifted up his hand like this and it went straight down,” O’Donoghue said.

The seven women and five men on the jury at the Central Criminal Court watched a video screen yesterday showing the accused raising his arm to mime the lifting and letting go of something.

“It is hard to describe the feeling. I didn’t know what to do. I know people looking at it from the outside say I should have rung the police, you should have rung the ambulance, you should have rung your parents.

“It is hard to describe what it is like. It didn’t even come into my mind that I’d better ring the ambulance. I was in total shock.

He denied that he “flipped the lid” the moment before Robert Holohan was killed. And he denied that his relationship, as a 20-year-old at the time with an 11-year-old, was unusual in the context of a country area where he was the eldest of a group of children in Ballyedmond and they were all friendly with each other.