A BELFAST court was told yesterday that some of the last words heard from Robert McCartney before he died were “Nobody deserves this”.
Belfast Crown Court also heard that a woman known as “Witness C” will be called to give evidence against Terence Davison, who is charged with the murder of 33-year-old Robert McCartney outside Magennis’s Bar in central Belfast in January 2005.
Mr Davison (51), from Stanfield Place, Belfast, denies the murder charge.
Mr Davison is also charged with affray, as are James McCormick and Joseph Fitzpatrick, both from Belfast. Mr Fitzpatrick is also charged with assaulting one of Mr McCartney’s friends, Edward Gowdy.
Gordon Kerr QC, outlining the prosecution case, told of how Mr McCartney, a father of two young boys, allegedly was stabbed outside Magennis’s after becoming embroiled in a row inside the pub. The fight erupted after Mr McCartney, a forklift driver, was accused of making a sexual insult to Mr Davison’s partner and refusing to apologise.
Mr McCartney was allegedly assaulted inside the bar, and when the trouble spilled out into the street he was allegedly pursued and stabbed in the stomach by Mr Davison.
This attack was seen by “Witness C”, who was driving in Belfast city centre at the time and who identified Mr Davison, the court heard. She witnessed the attack from 12 feet. She would also claim that after the stabbing Mr Davison kicked Mr McCartney in the head as hard as he could.
“The prosecution say that the evidence taken as a whole would entitle the court to draw the proper inference that Davison was seen by ‘Witness C’ violently attacking and killing Mr McCartney,” Mr Kerr said.
“The court will be invited to conclude that the swiping motions she has described were the use of a knife by the defendant who stabbed Mr McCartney and killed him,” he added.
Mr McCartney’s sisters and fiancee Bridgeen Hagans, the mother of his two boys, were in the court for the opening of the case yesterday.
Mr Kerr contended that even if the trial judge, Mr Justice Gillen, in this non-jury case, had reasonable doubts about “Witness C’s” evidence, there would be other eyewitness evidence that Mr Davison was earlier involved in assaulting Mr McCartney as part of a “joint enterprise” with others in the bar.
It was also alleged that Brendan Devine, a friend of Mr McCartney’s who is due to give evidence in the case, was so badly assaulted during the incident that he ended up in hospital for two weeks with serious neck and other injuries.
The court was told Mr Devine said that Mr McCartney turned to him during the assault to say “Nobody deserves this”.
Earlier yesterday Mr Justice Gillen rejected an application from the defence counsel, Orlando Pownall QC, to have the case stopped.
Mr Pownall argued that it would be unfair to Mr Davison and preclude a fair trial if the prosecution pursued a case based on “discrete” and “mutually exclusive alternatives”: one that Mr Davison as part of a “joint enterprise” with others killed Mr McCartney; and two that Mr Davison as the “principal” agent acting alone killed Mr McCartney. The judge ruled that both alleged incidents were interlinked and part of the same unfolding chain of events that led to Mr McCartney’s death.
The trial continues.
