Ex-girlfriend of accused 'saw him stab victim'

The former girlfriend of a Dublin man accused of murder has told a jury that she saw him stab the victim on Easter Sunday morning two years ago in a Wexford caravan park.

Kirstie O'Callaghan told the Central Criminal Court that she saw Stephen Delaney of Belcare Grove, Ballymun stab 37-year-old Anthony Cullen a number of times on April 8, 2007.

She told Paul O Higgins SC, prosecuting, that she saw both men fall to the ground before the stabbing.

“Anthony was lying on the his side. Stephen was bending over, on his knees. I saw Stephen’s hand go up an down a couple of times,” she said. “When he was doing it, I froze. I couldn’t move.”

Delaney (aged 24) has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Cullen, but admits unlawfully killing him by stabbing him at Burmah Caravan Park in Rosslare.

Ms O’Callaghan said she was going out with the accused only a week at the time and has not been in a relationship with him since. She said he was living in a mobile home belonging to Noel Davidson at the time, and that she and her friends went there on Easter Saturday night to drink. People were also smoking cannabis and taking ecstasy.

Ms O’Callaghan explained that Mr Cullen was drunk and the accused put him out of the mobile home for falling over and knocking a table of drinks. She said Mr Cullen’s friend, Aidan Duggan, had been punching, kicking and stamping on Mr Cullen’s head throughout the night.

She said she had called an ambulance before the stabbing, when she saw a cut on Mr Cullen’s head after he had been put out of the caravan and had fallen on steps.

She said that at this stage there was arguing and she saw her boyfriend go into the kitchen and get a knife.

“I tried to stop him. I took the knife off him, but someone gave him another one,” she said. “I tried to pull the second one off him. I tried stopping him.”

She said that after the stabbing, the defendant took the first knife from her and threw it over the caravan.

Ms O’Callaghan told Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC, defending, that she first thought it was Aidan Duggan who had been stabbed. “I could just see shadows,” she said, having explained that she had to earlier use the light from her mobile phone to see the cut on Mr Cullen’s head.

She agreed that it was with Duggan who Delaney had been arguing and Mr Duggan’s assaults on the deceased seemed to be what caused her boyfriend to lose his head.

She also agreed that Mr Delaney seemed to be out of control and in a rage, when he pushed past her with the knife.

When asked, she told Mr O Lideadha she could not remember any more details than those in the statements she gave to gardaí at the time.

“I don’t remember anything more. If anything I remember less,” she said. “It’s something you try to block out.”

The trial continues before Mr Justice George Bermingham and a jury of seven men and five women.