Murder accused was like 'volcano erupting', court hears

A 31-year-old Cork man accused of murder has told a jury at the Central Criminal Court that he "was like a volcano erupting" the night he stabbed one of his neighbours to death.

"Something happened inside me and I was like a volcano erupting. I thought my head was going to explode," Keith O’Donovan told a jury from the witness box today.

Mr O’Donovan, of Spriggs Road, Gurranabraher, Cork, has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Noel McCarthy, aged 28, at his home on Spriggs Road, Gurranabraher, Cork on May 4, 2000.

"I just went off my game. I can’t remember what I done. If Mrs McCarthy said I done that, I did it," he told Mr Paul Green BL, prosecuting.

Mrs McCarthy testified earlier in the trial that she was in the hallway when her son Noel was stabbed and bled to death when Mr O’Donovan called to the door, pushed his way in and fatally stabbed her son in the groin, severing his femoral artery.

Under cross-examination by Mr Green, Mr O’Donovan said: "I didn’t mean to assault Noel, I love Noel, we grew up together."

When asked where he got the knife the accused replied: "I just totally can’t remember that, I just went off me game."

When asked if he had tried to remember over the years where he got the knife that night, the accused said: "I try to forget that day. I tried to bury it as much as I could, I just want to forget that day."

Mr Green asked him if he remembered telling Mr John Edwards SC two years ago before a different jury that he found the knife in the sitting room with a tea-towel around it: "You told another jury precisely where you found the knife," said Mr Green.

"To be honest I can’t remember what I said," said the accused.

"'To be honest' is an unfortunate expression," replied Mr Green.

The accused told Mr Green he snapped when he saw the look of "terror" on his child’s face when Mr McCarthy was allegedly at the door the second time.

"I’ve lost my temper before but this was wild," he told Mr Green.

"Yet you managed to arm yourself with a knife," said Mr Green.

"If that’s what happened, that’s what happened. I’m not disputing that, no," replied Mr O’Donovan.

When Mr Green recalled Garda ballistic evidence that the McCarthy’s front door had not been damaged or forced in in any way, the accused said he didn’t know "if the door was forced or not".

"Somebody who can arm himself with a knife and wait patiently for the door to be opened is acting in a cold-blooded manner and is thinking clearly," Mr Green put to the accused.

"This is someone I had known all my life," said Mr O’Donovan. "Doesn’t that make it worse?" said Mr Green.

"This business of how you snapped and can’t remember is not true," he put to the accused.

"I’m saying it’s the truth if my child was struck down this minute," insisted Mr O’Donovan. "My mind was gone. It was a moment of madness, that’s the way I could describe it," he added.

Earlier Mr O’Donovan told Ms Elizabeth O’Connell, defending, that he had called to Mr McCarthy’s house around 9pm on May 3 2000 and asked him to come down to the pub with him.

He alleges that Mr McCarthy refused but invited him around after pub hours. Mr O’Donovan alleged today that he and a friend, James Hourigan, called to the McCarthy house around midnight but were not allowed in.

"I just couldn’t understand why he saying that," said the accused. He told Ms O’Connell that a "ridiculous stupid argument broke out" between himself and the deceased at the door and they "got into a scuffle with each other".

He said the deceased "kept escalating it" and the shouting continued until Mr Hourigan and his mother brought him down to his house.

The accused claimed that Mr McCarthy then came down to his house and was "banging" and "shouting".

"When my mother opened the door we could hear all the abuse, everybody was terrified," said Mr O’Donovan.

He said his friend James Hourigan calmed Noel McCarthy down and "things more or less quietened down".

The accused then alleged that about "an hour and a half" later, around 2am, more banging was heard at the door.

He said Mr Hourigan opened the door and he and his mother and his six-year-old son were all in the hallway.

"Noel was saying ‘get Keith and Jammer out now’. I was standing with my mother and Shane in the doorway. I turned around to look at the expression on my mother’s and son’s face and then I lost it," Mr O’Donovan alleged.

"I thought of my childhood. I looked at Shane and saw myself as a kid crying, I just lost it, I can’t explain it," he told Ms O’Connell.

He said he could only "remember flashes" of what happened after that. "I remember Noel running down the road, I remember in Noel’s house, I remember walking back up the road," he told the jury.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul Butler tomorrow.