O'Donoghue: Panic set in after I killed Robert

Murder accused, Wayne O’Donoghue, said people looking at the case from the outside would say he should have called the guards or an ambulance or his parents when he killed his eleven-year-old neighbour.

But he said panic set in and he went around in a daze.

This comment by O’Donoghue, 21, of Ballyedmond, Midleton, was made to investigating detectives the day after he confessed to killing Robert Holohan, 11, last January.

His confession to the January 4 killing was made on January 16. The day after the lengthy statement was made, he was questioned about it in Midleton Garda Station.

It was made clear to O’Donoghue that detectives were unhappy with some aspects of the statement that he made at his home in the course of over seven hours the previous evening.

During the question and answer session on January 17, he described throwing water on Robert Holohan’s face after he carried his body into the bathroom of the O’Donoghue house.

He was hoping it might revive him. “There was nothing. Lifeless like,” he said.

“I lifted up his hand like this and it went straight down,” O’Donoghue said.

The seven women and five men on the jury at the Central Criminal Court watched a video screen today of the accused raising his arm to mime the lifting and letting go of something.

“It is hard to describe the feeling. I didn’t know what to do. I know people looking at it from the outside say I should have rung the police, you should have rung the ambulance. You should have rung your parents.

“It is hard to describe what it is like. It didn’t even come into my mind that I’d better ring the ambulance. I was in total shock.

“I stayed for a minute or two. I was in a daze. It is hard to describe what I was thinking.”

This was the moment where he considered suicide and held a knife to his throat as he looked into the bathroom mirror.

“I don’t know why I didn’t. I was probably a coward… Something came over me, a family who love me and a girlfriend who I love,” he said.

He denied the suggestion that he ‘flipped the lid’ the moment before Robert Holohan was killed.

And he denied that his relationship, as a twenty-year-old at the time with an eleven-year-old was unusual in the context of a country area where he was the eldest of a group of children in

Ballyedmond and they were all friendly with each other.

O’Donoghue denies murder but admits the manslaughter of Robert Holohan.

The trial continues tomorrow.