A 41-year-old father of two told a court yesterday he was “absolutely petrified” after his 67-year-old neighbour allegedly threatened to kill him.
At Ennis Circuit Court, Ray Crowley told the jury the threat was made in March 2010, when neighbour and married father of seven grown-up children Martin McLaughlin warned him, “I will get my lads to beat the shit out of you and bury you in that f***ing wall.”
Mr Crowley said he asked Mr McLaughlin was he threatening his life and Mr McLaughlin replied, “Yes I f***ing am.”
Mr Crowley said Mr McLaughlin made another threat to his life during an incident outside his home at Barefield, Co Clare on September 24th, 2011, after he saw Mr McLaughlin cut Mr Crowley’s hedge with a hedge cutter.
He said: “Mr McLaughlin was cutting my hedges. I asked him to stop cutting my hedges. He replied, ‘F*** off or I’ll kill you’.
Mr Crowley said: “I took out a camera to take photos of him cutting the hedges before I went back in home.”
He told the jury: “I needed to get out of there. He had a hedge cutter in his hands and he was coming for me with the hedge cutter.”
In the case, Martin McLaughlin denies threatening to kill Mr Crowley on two separate occasions, on March 19th, 2010, and September 24th, 2011.
Both Mr McLaughlin and his wife Ann (65), of Ballymaconna, Barefield, Ennis, also deny harassing Mr Crowley and his wife, Patrizia, over a six-year period, from October 1st, 2006, to March 31st, 2012.
Mr Crowley said that earlier in 2011, his CCTV recorded Mr McLaughlin spraying a substance on his boundary wall and his hedge.
He said: “I didn’t know what was in the spray, but a few days later, the vegetation had gone brown and was decaying.”
Mr Crowley said that because he didn’t know what was in the spray, he was concerned for his children and didn’t let them or their friends play at the property for a time after that.
He said: “I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened any of the children.”
Outlining another incident on February 14th, 2012, Mr Crowley said he witnessed Ann McLaughlin tell his wife Patrizia, ‘I’ll get you, you f***ing c***ing bitch’.
Counsel for Ms McLaughlin, Mark Nicholas BL, said his client never uttered those words and what was said in evidence was said just to blacken her name.
He said: “She has never been in court before. What she did say was, ‘Stop taking my photo, bitch’.
Mr Nicholas said his client shouldn’t have uttered those words and regrets them, but she was at the end of her tether after seeing gardaí arrest her husband and after being photographed by Ms Crowley.
Mr Crowley explained that he first met Mr McLaughlin at the site at Barefield outside Ennis in 2004 when Mr Crowley purchased it.
Mr Crowley said that when he first went to view the site in 2004, Mr McLaughlin came up to him “and he told me that it was a bad site and that I shouldn’t have bought it”.
Mr Crowley said a digger was later looking to punch a hole through the hedgeway to gain access to the site, and hit a water pipe.
He said Mr McLaughlin told him: “That’s strike one. You’ll be sorry. I’ll make sure of that’.
Mr Crowley said on a later occasion when he and his engineer were surveying the site, Mr McLaughlin approached him to say: ‘If you don’t sort out these pipes, I will f***ing kill you’.
Mr Crowley said: “I didn’t take it as a threat. I thought he was blowing off steam. It was very early in the development and I didn’t know him at that stage.”
Mr Crowley said he shook hands with Mr McLaughlin in 2009.
He said: “I had had enough and I approached him on the road and asked him what could be resolved. I told him I just wanted to get on and could we be able to move on from our differences. I was overjoyed when we shook hands and finally I thought that we were about to enter a new chapter.
He added: “But within a few minutes of that happening, Mr McLaughlin said to me that there was an incident a year previous to that when he said his good name was slandered and I knew from his body language that he didn’t want to move on.
“I was gutted because I thought that was our chance gone, and after that I decided I wouldn’t have any contact with him.”
The trial continues today.
