Witness saw murder accused stab man, court hears

A witness has told a murder trial jury that he saw a Carlow man accused of murder stabbing the deceased man in the neck, the shoulder and the back.

Twenty-two-year-old John Dillon of Granby Row, Carlow is on trial for the murder of 17-year-old Warren Slater in the Central Criminal Court.

Mr Slater was stabbed to death outside a house at Granby Row, Carlow on May 13, 2001.

John Dillon denies a charge of murder.

The court has been told that at the time of the incident, Mr Slater lived with his girlfriend Ms Louise Heary and their six-month old baby in a downstairs bedsit of the same house in which Mr Dillon lived with his mother Noeleen and his sister Cathy.

In evidence today, Mr Joe Salmon told the trial that at the time he was a student living in a house on the opposite side of the street.

On the night of May 13 he was hosting a party for his birthday.

Warren Slater came to the house and was drunk by 11:30pm and was "extremely drunk" by the early hours of the morning.

Mr Salmon said there was incident between Warren and his girlfriend earlier that night which caused the gardai to be called.

He did not know what the incident was.

In the early hours of May 13 Louise Heary knocked on the door and asked for Warren to come home.

Mr Salmon asked Warren to leave the house, he said, and then he heard raised voices outside.

Later, he looked out the window, and he saw Warren stooped over Louise with his hands behind his back. He appeared to be "in her face", he agreed with counsel.

Then he saw John Dillon come towards Warren and saw him stab him in the side of the neck, in the right shoulder and in his back. They were "very strong blows", Mr Salmon told counsel for the state, Mr Edward Comyn SC.

He agreed with Mr Patrick J McCarthy SC, defending, that he did not see everything that went on during the incident.

Questioned by trial judge Mr Justice White he said the time interval between when Warren left the house to when he, Mr Salmon, looked out the window was "not more than five minutes".

But cross-examined again by the defence counsel, he said he wasn’t using a stopwatch and it could have been "between five and ten minutes".

In evidence, the accused man’s mother, Ms Noeleen Dillon has alleged that she was "nearly being raped" by Warren Slater a couple of weeks before the stabbing.

She has told the trial that Warren Slater mentioned the alleged attempted rape during an unrelated incident on the night of May 13, 2001.

She said she heard her son John say, "You tried to rape my mother" and then heard Mr Slater say "So what?" or words to that effect.

Mrs Dillon said her son "just flipped" after that exchange and that he ran into the house and returned with a knife.

The trial continues before Mr Justice White and a jury.