Garda wiped baton after alleged attack, court hears

A GARDA said she saw a colleague wipe his baton and another wipe his knuckles after an alleged assault at a flat on Dublin’s Basin Street three years ago.

Garda Catherine Patterson, then a student garda, said she recalled Garda Eoin Murtagh ask for an antiseptic wipe for a graze on his knuckles and her then tutor, Garda Sean O’Leary, clean his baton with a similar wipe when they had returned to their patrol car after leaving the flat.

Garda Patterson told Tom O’Connell, prosecuting, it was suggested she might be implicated or be an accessory to a crime and would lose her job when another accused, Garda Claire Delaney, had asked about the Garda Ombudsman Commission.