The driver of a bus which hit and killed five people outside the Clarence Hotel in Dublin city centre three years ago was supposed to be on a day off, but was doing overtime to pay for his daughter to go on holiday.
A Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury heard on day three of the trial that Kenneth Henvey was in a state of extreme shock when the bus came to a halt and he had to be coaxed out of his seat.
Eyewitness Oliver Galvin said Mr Henvey got on his radio and said there were dead bodies everywhere, then put his head in his hands and began sobbing and repeating "this can't be happening".
Mr Henvey (51), Whitethorn Crescent, Palmerstown, has pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving causing the deaths of two men and three women at Wellington Quay on February 21st, 2004. The married father of three had been driving a bus for 13 years before the incident and had tested negative for drugs or alcohol.
Mr Galvin said that while the bus was moving he saw the driver "frantically turning the steering wheel to the right, really fast, as fast as he could do it".
Truck driver Patrick O'Leary told Thomas O'Connell SC (with Patrick McGrath BL), prosecuting, he was driving along Wellington Quay when he noticed Mr Henvey's bus accelerate. "It seemed like the bus just took off and he couldn't stop it." Mr O'Leary said he thought the driver seemed to be in trouble and was "trying to control it".
Sgt Brendan Flanagan arrived at the scene and was told by the fire brigade that there were four people dead and a number of others trapped under the bus.
He saw a dead woman lying at the front of the bus with a blanket over her.
Sgt Flanagan said he saw Mr Henvey in his seat looking straight ahead and holding on to the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.
Garda Patrick Casey was the first garda at the scene and told the jury there was "an extreme amount of panic". He said Mr Henvey was in extreme shock and had to be coaxed off the bus.
He brought Mr Henvey into the Clarence Hotel where he refused tea or water as he would not have been able to hold them down but asked for a cigarette and rang home to say "something awful had happened".
Garda Casey said Mr Henvey told him that he had boarded the parked bus, put it out of service, looked over his shoulder and then it "just took off".
The jury earlier heard that a number 66 bus had pulled in some distance from the kerb in front of a parked, out-of-service bus. A crowd of up to 30 people moved forward to board the 66 bus when the out-of-service bus mounted the pavement and drove up the inside of the 66, hitting the people waiting to board it.
Cheryl Ann Harding had just boarded the 66 when she saw the out-of-service bus pass by. "From where I was standing, I'd never seen a bus move so fast, then it was gone," she said. Leona Doolin said she was waiting at the stop when she saw the out-of-service bus coming. She said that in her opinion it was "going very fast, like it was hijacked".
Francis Donnelly, a mechanical inspector working for Dublin Bus, said he had examined Mr Henvey's bus on February 9th, 2004 and "everything was in full working order on that date". He said he had driven the bus and found the brakes to be "all right" and the steering "grand".
He told Mr O'Connell he put the bus in gear with the handbrake on to see if it would take off, but it "held steady".
Mr Henvey said he got on to the bus, pressed the out-of-service button and "the next thing I knew the bus seemed to shoot off and was heading towards people. The next thing I knew it had stopped."
He said he did not know how it happened and for a split second the bus was out of control.
In a later statement to gardaí, he said that nine out of 10 times he clicked the bus out of gear when he boarded it: "everyone has their own habits . . . there are so many routine things".
In a witness statement read to the jury, Joao Philippe, an Angolan asylum seeker, told gardaí how an elderly woman screamed at him "get back to your own country" when he shouted at her to call an ambulance.
Mr Philippe said he was waiting for a bus when he felt something "hit me hard from behind" and he was knocked to the ground.
He said he saw the bus driving on the pavement with its front left wheel "going over a Chinese girl's leg". "I was screaming at the woman to call an ambulance, but she was shouting at me to get out of the country."