A man accused of murder danced on the head of his victim, a witness told the Central Criminal Court yesterday.
Mr William "Buster" Carroll (51), of no fixed abode, has denied the murder of Mr Thomas Harte (40), of Allen's Square, Ballymacthomas, Cork, at a disused house on Leitrim Street in the north of the city, on dates unknown between May 19th and 20th, 1997.
Mr Patrick Crowley said the accused man had told him he "got the better" of his alleged victim during a fight the previous night. In a statement to gardai, Mr Crowley said Mr Carroll told him a row broke out with Mr Harte after he and a number of other men arrived at the house.
After Mr Carroll and the other men "came in last night . . . they went to bed and [Mr Harte] started roaring and shouting and they told him to shut up and he wouldn't. Buster said they attacked him there and they finished him off. He told me he'd danced on his head."
Mr Noel O'Loughlin, from Ennis, Co Clare, told the court he stayed in the house where the dead man was. Mr O'Loughlin said after arriving at the house past midnight, he crept in the window and slept lightly. No other people entered the room that night, he said.
The next morning the three people on the floor of the front room where he lay were "the two and the fella that was dead". "I says, `what's the story with your man there?' and one said `I think he's dead, he's been there a few days', " he said.
Ms Emily Hurley, the dead man's sister, said her eldest brother of six had been living with his mother when he died. He occasionally worked at the Blackpool Community Centre and had "severe epilepsy" and was receiving a disability pension.
Ms Hurley said two or three times a year her brother would go out and "not come back. He'd been doing it over a number of years and the hospital would ring and he'd have had an epileptic fit", having forgotten to take his medicine, she said.
The trial before Mrs Justice McGuinness and a jury continues today.