Garda denies suggesting witness change name in statement

A senior garda denied to the Morris Tribunal today that he had influenced a witness by suggesting she change a name in her statement.

Sgt Tom McMenamin took Mary McGranahan’s statement in November 1996 which she then changed in January 1997.

Ms McGranahan claims to have seen two men together on the street of Raphoe on October 14, 1996, the night Richie Barron died in an apparent hit-and-run.

Although originally telling gardaí one of the men was Eamon Meehan, she changed her statement two months later, claiming it had actually been Michael Peoples, a member of the extended McBrearty family.

As the tribunal resumed after adjourning following the first devastating report of Justice Frederick Morris, Sgt McMenamin said it had been established that Mr Meehan must have been at home by 9pm on the evening Mr Barron died.

Sgt McMenamin strenuously denied that Ms McGranahan had changed her statement after he had told her she must have been mistaken.

“I did not, and have never in all my time of taking statements, suggested to anyone that a particular person may have been in a certain place at a certain time,” he said.

However, he did admit that he may have told her it could not have been Mr Meehan, to which she had then said “something to the effect” that it may have been someone else.

Sgt McMenamin said the only thing she appeared to be certain of was that there were two men.

The Tribunal was also told that in her third statement, Ms McGranahan had then narrowed down the time she saw the two men, from between 11pm and 11.50pm in the first, to 11pm in the third.

The inquiry was set up to look into the Garda murder investigation following Mr Barron’s death on October 14, 1996 in an apparent hit-and-run in Raphoe, Co Donegal.

An investigation, headed by the Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty, was then launched in 1999 after the McBrearty family alleged they had been harassed by local gardaí during the investigation.