A Central Criminal Court jury has been told they will hear "distressing evidence" of a pensioner who was found in a pool of blood outside his home after being violently killed with a machete.
The court was told that gardaí who responded to an early morning call from the pensioner only left his home minutes before his death.
Patrick McDonagh (52), with an address at Whitechapel Road, Clonsilla, Dublin 15, is charged with murdering his next-door neighbour Peter McDonald (73) on Whitechapel Road on July 25th, 2020.
When arraigned before the Central Criminal Court on Monday, Mr McDonagh pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to Mr McDonald's manslaughter.
However, the plea was not accepted by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and a jury was sworn in for the trial.
In his opening speech on Wednesday, Philipp Rahn SC, for the State, told the jury that the evidence will show that Mr McDonald died by machete and stab wounds to the head and neck in the early hours of July 25th, 2020.
Mr Rahn said he expected the main issue the jury will grapple with will be whether Mr McDonagh’s mental health on the night amounted to the “special defence of diminished responsibility” on the charge of murder.
Mr Rahn told the jury that Mr McDonald was a “quiet man, a pensioner, who kept to himself and lived with his cats” and that Mr McDonagh, who had a history of mental health issues, was his next-door neighbour for five or six years.
Catastrophic injuries
Mr Rahn told the jury there would be “distressing” evidence in the case. He said Mr McDonald was found dead outside his home in a pool of blood after sustaining “violent chopping and incisive wounds” to his head and neck.
Counsel said blood and blood spatter was also discovered by gardaí in Mr McDonald’s bathroom and hallway.
Mr Rahn said it will be “clear that the killing occurred in circumstances where the accused intended to kill or cause serious injury” to Mr McDonald.
He said that at around 10.30pm, Mr McDonagh could be seen by neighbouring witnesses in and around his front garden “praying and making a racket”, and he may have been seen to have something in his hand.
Mr Rahn said the jury would hear evidence of Mr McDonagh “being aggressive, shouting and roaring and making threats” at Mr McDonald’s house at around 3am.
Counsel said that at 4.20am, Mr McDonald rang gardaí, who attended his home for around 15 minutes and left just before 5.50am. Just after 5.50am, “screaming and pleading for help” could be heard by neighbours on the street, Mr Rahn said.
Counsel said gardaí returned “very quickly” to the scene and saw Mr McDonald lying in a pool of blood with “catastrophic injuries”, including a large penetrating wound to his neck, with no signs of life present.
Mr Rahn said Mr McDonald suffered “multiple chopping and stabbing wounds, incise wounds and fractured bones”.
A blood-stained machete and knife were seized by gardaí from the scene at Mr McDonagh’s home, he said.
“The ultimate issue is what type of unlawful killing it was, and we say, plain and simple, it was murder,” Mr Rahn said.
Neighbour
Witness Catriona Byrne told Mr Rahn that she lived on the same street as both men and that her house faced Mr McDonald’s house.
Ms Byrne said that at around 11.30pm, she heard “roaring”, looked outside an upstairs window and saw Mr McDonagh outside in his garden “shouting and roaring things like ‘just don’t come back, I’ll get you’”.
Ms Byrne said she saw Mr McDonagh get down on one knee and pray, and that he looked “drunk and fighting with himself”.
The witness said she believed Mr McDonagh had a machete in one hand, a clear bottle of “possibly spirits” in the other, and that she saw the defendant banging the machete off the ground.
Ms Byrne told John D Fitzgerald SC, for Mr McDonagh, that when she heard the accused shout “just don’t come back, I’ll get you”, he was not directing it towards any particular address or person.
Witness Paul Cahalane also lived opposite Mr McDonagh’s home, the court heard.
Mr Cahalane said he knew Mr McDonagh to say hello and talk to him. “I knew there was something odd – he had a bush in the front garden and blessed himself at it”, the witness said.
Mr Cahalane said he knew Peter McDonald as a “gentleman” who “kept himself to himself most of the time”.
On the morning of July 25th at around 2am, the witness said he saw Mr McDonagh at the end of his garden standing and looking up to the sky with clenched fists.
The witness said he heard Mr McDonagh’s voice at around 3.15am and looked out and saw Mr McDonagh pushing in the door of Mr McDonald’s house and that “twice he said he [Mr McDonagh] was going to kill him [Mr McDonald]”.
Scuffle
The witness said there was a scuffle at the door where Mr McDonald was “defending himself”, and Mr McDonagh returned to his own house.
Mr Cahalane said he told gardaí he did not believe Mr McDonagh “to be right in the head” and that he was “mentally unstable, praying to a medal hanging from a bush”.
Witness Adam Leyton also lived opposite the homes of the two men. At around 5.53am, he was in bed in the front bedroom of the property and was awoken by loud screams, he told Mr Rahn.
Mr Leyton said he heard a male voice scream “help me, help me”, so he pulled up his blind and curtains and saw “Peter on the ground, flat on the ground face-down”.
Mr McDonagh was standing beside Mr McDonald with a machete in his hand, “standing pretty much at his head in the garden” and that there was “blood everywhere”, Mr Leyton said.
The witness said Mr McDonagh walked slowly out of Mr McDonald’s garden and then “barricaded himself” into his own house.
Garda Jennifer Greene said she received a call at around 4.25am from Mr McDonald about Mr McDonagh, who had been complaining to him about the noise Mr McDonald’s cats were making and was worried that his garden side entrance could not be locked.
Gda Greene spoke to Mr McDonald and asked if gardaí should call out to him, which they did.
Gda Greene said at 5.57am, a call came in indicating that an incident had occurred at Whitechapel Road involving the use of a machete.
The garda said she attended the scene at 6.06am and observed a male lying face down in a pool of blood, “covered in blood with a very obvious wound to the head”.
Gda Greene said she assisted with preserving the scene at Mr McDonald’s home and the armed support unit then arrived at Mr McDonagh’s home.
The trial before Mr Justice Michael MacGrath and a jury of nine men and three women is expected to last up to two weeks.
