A man on trial for the murder and rape of a Co Galway schoolgirl extended his wrists to be handcuffed and said "Put them on, I was expecting you" when gardai came to arrest him, a superintendent told a jury yesterday.
The 26-year-old Co Galway man has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the 17-year-old schoolgirl and two counts of rape on the same occasion early on December 6th, 1998.
Mr Jim Sugrue, a retired Garda superintendent, told the Central Criminal Court trial that at 5.45 a.m. on June 17th, 1999, he and another detective walked into a lorry compound in Co Kildare and approached a lorry there.
He saw two people asleep in the lorry cab, one of whom was the accused. He opened the driver's door, and the detective with him tapped the accused on the shoulder to wake him up.
As the superintendent identified himself and showed his ID, the accused man said: "I know, I know."
"He extended his two arms together to the detective sergeant and said: `Put them on. I was expecting you'," Mr Sugrue said.
Mr Barry White SC, defending, put it to the superintendent that his client never spoke those words. Mr Sugrue said those were his exact words, and he did not take a note of it "because they stuck in my mind from that day".
He insisted he had cautioned the accused immediately after his arrest. He agreed he had not included the caution in a statement written a week later.
Insp P.J. Durkin, who at the time was a detective sergeant, said he asked the accused on December 7th about scrape marks on the inner sides of both his arms. The accused said he was in a row outside a hotel on the night of the 5th, and "there were a lot of women there, and that's how he got the scrapes".
The inspector then asked him if he had any more marks and he said he did not, but when he was asked to remove his shirt there were scrape marks on the side of his stomach. They were about five inches in length, the inspector said, and they appeared to be fresh scrapes.
"He told me he might have got them from scratching himself and that he could have got them anywhere." the inspector said.
When he travelled in the accused man's car to the Garda station, he also noticed that the front seat cover was missing. The prosecution has said it will call forensic evidence that it claims will link fibres found on the car's passenger seat cover to clothes worn by the schoolgirl.
Det Sgt Gerry Roche told Mr White that the accused readily agreed to make the witness statements.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Smith and a jury.