A young man who stabbed a fisherman who had entered his home after smashing the front window in the early hours of the morning has been acquitted of his murder but found guilty of manslaughter.
A Central Criminal Court jury of seven women and four men took just under six hours to unanimously come to their verdict in the retrial of Dean Kerrie (21), who denied murdering Jack Power. The accused, who was 17 at the time, said that Mr Power had entered his home after 3am and attacked him and his mother.
Following the verdict, Mr Justice Paul McDermott refused to allow Kerrie to remain on bail and remanded him in custody until a sentencing hearing on October 19th. The judge ordered a probation report and a victim impact statement from the deceased man’s family. Following the verdict Kerrie hugged members of his family while the deceased’s family and supporters comforted one another at the back of the court.
This was the second time in less than six months that Kerrie went on trial for the same offence; his first trial ended last February when the jury could not agree on a verdict. In that trial, Kerrie took the stand, telling the jury that Mr Power had lost his footing and fell onto a knife that Kerrie had picked up while the deceased was attacking his mother.
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He did not give evidence at his second trial but the jury heard that after he was arrested Kerrie told Sgt Pat Kenny: “He should not have come into my house. I was asleep. I heard a smash and the front window breaking. Jack was in the hall and grabbed my mother. He started punching and swinging kicks. I grabbed a knife that was next to bed. Stabbed him with it.”
Sgt Kenny said Kerrie was holding a bottle of holy water as he spoke.
Kerrie (21), with an address at St Brigid’s Square, Portarlington in Co Laois, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Power (25) at Shanakiel, Dunmore East, Co Waterford on July 26th, 2018.
The trial heard that Mr Power had been drinking with friends in a pub and saw damage to the wing mirror of his car as he left and believed Kerrie was responsible. He drove to an area close to where Kerrie lived, picked up a rock and used it to smash one of the front windows.
There were differing accounts of what happened next. The jury heard a 999 call made by Kerrie at 3.44am on July 26th, in which the teenager said that Mr Power had come “in the front door at him” and tried to hit him. He said he had stabbed Mr Power in the chest with a kitchen knife but that he did not mean to.
The deceased’s best friend Christopher Lee said he saw Mr Power going into the garden of the Kerrie house, pushing Kerrie’s mother to the ground and going into the house after the accused.
Mr Lee went “close enough to the front door” of the house and saw Mr Power and Kerrie arguing through a window.
“I saw Dean coming from the kitchen with a knife in his hand. Jack was walking out of the house facing me,” he said, adding that he then heard Kerrie shouting. “Jack turned around and I noticed Dean moving fast and saw a knife in his hand. I saw Dean push his hand towards Jack’s chest.”
Kerrie’s best friend, Dylan Jones, told defence counsel Ciaran O’Loughlin SC that he saw Mr Power “choking” Kerrie and saying: ‘I’m going to kill you.’ He said Kerrie’s mother, Ann Fitzgerald, was in the hallway and Mr Power grabbed her by the hair and “swung her side to side”.
At this point, he said Mr Power stumbled backwards and then into the hallway and out the front door. Mr Jones said he did not see a knife and did not see Mr Power being stabbed but he accepted that it must have happened. He recalled Kerrie tearfully saying: “I think I stabbed him, I need to call the guards.”
Mr Jones said the prosecution’s case, that there was a scuffle and that Mr Power was moving towards the front door when Kerrie took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed him, was “complete lies”.