History repeating in Listowel land row, says assault suspect

A 40-YEAR-OLD Kerry farmer, charged with assault arising from an ongoing dispute with a neighbouring farming family, yesterday claimed his great grandfather had got a revolver from the State to protect himself from them.

John Leahy, single, of Meen, Listowel, said he was acting in self-defence when he struck Roger Carmody on the head with a hammer during a row about access to a field, on October 2, 2007.

He also said history was repeating itself in a dispute over a right of way to a land-locked, 5.5-acre field, known as the Meadow Bank.

Leahy has pleaded not guilty to assault causing harm to Roger Carmody and to assaulting Jack Sullivan, at Meen, Listowel, on the occasion. He also denies threatening to kill, or seriously injure, three members of the Carmody family, Patrick Senior, Patrick Junior and John Carmody, on the same date.

On the second day of his trial he claimed the Carmodys were jealous of him leasing land from an adjoining farmer and were trying to make things as difficult as possible for him by knocking his ditches to reopen a right of way long abandoned.

A rusty, claw hammer used by Leahy to strike Roger Carmody was on display during the jury trial before Judge Carroll Moran at the Circuit Criminal Court, in Tralee.

Roger Carmody said he had spent four days in hospital, as a result, and suffered from depression, headaches, memory loss and was not sleeping well. He alleged Leahy wanted to frighten the Carmodys out of the field, which they owned at the back of the Leahy farm yard.

Leahy said the right of way at the top of his haggard, where the incident occurred, had not been used for 40 years. On the day in question a digger was used to open up new gaps in Leahy’s ditches to get to the abandoned right of way.

After Roger Carmody and Jack Sullivan approached him and gave the thumbs down signal to him, he went back to his tractor to get the hammer which he used to pull thorny wire.

Asked by prosecuting counsel Tom Rice why he got the hammer, he said he had in mind an incident a year previously in which he claimed he was surrounded by three of the Carmodys and was threatened from behind with an iron bar. He felt he could have been killed.

Roger Carmody and Jack Sullivan came at him with fists and kicks. He had the hammer raised intending to hit Roger Carmody on the shoulder, but Roger raised his hand and the hammer glanced off his hand and struck him a glancing blow on the top of his head.

“Going back generations they (the Carmodys) always travel in threes. My great grandfather got a revolver from the State to protect himself from them. They had his grave dug to bury him. History repeats itself, I’m afraid. That’s what’s after happening here.”

Consulting engineer Ger O’Keeffe agreed with Mr Rice that the division of the Carmody and Leahy lands, which had originally been one farm, was “not the most sensible division”. The court heard how rights of way were established in the courts, in the 1950s.

The trial continues.