A truck driver told the Special Criminal Court yesterday he saw the pillion passenger on a motorcycle smash the driver's window of Veronica Guerin's car moments before the journalist was murdered.
Mr Michael Dunne said when he went to the car he saw Ms Guerin "slumped across the seats. Her whole chest was blood and gunshot wounds", he said.
Garda ballistics expert Det Sgt Patrick Ennis said Ms Guerin was hit by six bullets fired from the same .357 Magnum revolver. The bullets were "semiwadcutters", a type often used in sporting target practice which "create a neat rounded hole".
The three judges in court ruled yesterday that 40 statements made by 20 people, including informants, to the gardai were privileged and should not be disclosed to the defence.
It was the second day of the resumed trial of Mr Paul Ward (34), from Crumlin, Dublin, with an address at Walkinstown Road, Dublin. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Ms Guerin (36), at the Naas Road, Clondalkin, Co Dublin, on June 26th, 1996. The prosecution has claimed that while Mr Ward was neither the driver of the motorcycle nor the passenger who fired the shots that killed Ms Guerin, he was a member of the gang that planned and carried out the killing and he disposed of the murder weapon and the motorcycle afterwards.
When the trial resumed yesterday, Mr Justice Barr, presiding, said the court had examined documents relating to 20 people interviewed by gardai investigating the Guerin murder. The documents were either written statements or notes of interviews and privilege had been claimed on the grounds that disclosure would endanger the lives or property of the people concerned. The judge said the court was satisfied that "per se the contents of the documents offer no assistance whatsoever to the accused in his defence and are prejudicial to his case".
The court was further satisfied that the prosecution claim to privilege was "well founded" and the documents ought not to be disclosed. The judge added that if it emerged in the course of the trial the contents of any of the documents might be helpful to the defendant, the court would consider the document again. Mr Dunne said he was driving his truck along the Naas Road on June 26th, 1996, and was stopped at traffic lights at the Green Isle Hotel. He was four or five cars behind a red Opel Calibra and he had his radio on. Mr Dunne said he saw a motorcycle come along the driver's side of the red car while they were stopped at the lights. There were two people on the motorcycle, both wearing helmets and leather gear. One of them wore a black leather jacket and blue jeans. Mr Dunne said the pillion passenger took something out of his jacket and broke the driver's window and put it back inside his jacket and the motorcycle then sped off.
Mr Dunne said he got out of his truck and heard people saying a woman had been shot. He said he saw Ms Guerin "just slumped across the seats, her whole chest was blood and gunshot wounds". Det Sgt Fergus Trainor said he went to a lock-up premises at Greenmount Industrial Estate in Harold's Cross on October 6th, 1996, with a search warrant. Gardai forced their way into the premises and he saw a black bag which contained what he believed to be bars of cannabis. Dr Daniel O'Driscoll, a forensic scientist with the Department of Justice, said he examined a number of bars which had been removed from the premises at Greenmount Industrial Estate and found them to be cannabis resin. Dr O'Driscoll said the total weight of the cannabis was 47.8kg, which was enough to make 473,725 hand-rolled cannabis cigarettes.
Det Sgt Ennis said he arrived at the scene of the shooting at 2.15 p.m. on June 26th, 1996. He saw Ms Guerin's body in the car. The upper body, arms and hands were heavily bloodstained as were the seats. Her lower left arm was entangled with the power lead of the car's mobile phone, which was switched on. The button for the last number redial had been hit, he added. He removed a bullet from the floor of the car between Ms Guerin's feet and from other areas of the car. One bullet had passed through the passenger seat and the passenger door.
Det Sgt Ennis said he attended the post-mortem carried out on Ms Guerin by State Pathologist Dr John Harbison and recovered bullets taken from her left and right collar-bones. He said he recovered six bullets in all.
Some of the bullets were damaged, but he was able to plot the trajectory of three of the bullets. He said the shots entered through the driver's window at an angle of 40 to 45 degrees with the window and 75 degrees from the rear. He said that if someone was sitting at the driver's door the bullets would have gone through them. From an examination of the bullets he removed from the car and the bullets that were removed from Ms Guerin's body he formed the opinion that they were either .38 or .357 Magnum calibre bullets, both of which could be fired from a .357 Magnum revolver.
Det Sgt Ennis said he carried out a microscopic examination of the bullets and concluded they were "reloaded" bullets and not factory-loaded bullets. He explained that bullets could be reloaded into discharged cartridge cases and could then be reused. They were not dum-dum bullets, which had a hollow point or had been tampered with. These type of bullets had been used by criminals in this country when it had been difficult to obtain replacement ammunition, but he agreed they were often used for reasons of cost by sporting organisations in Europe.
Det Sgt Ennis said he had examined guns and ammunition found in a grave at a Jewish cemetery at Oldcourt Road in Tallaght. There were five semi-automatic pistols with silencers, a sub-machinegun and a machine pistol with a silencer and several hundred rounds of assorted ammunition. He also examined a number of rounds of .357 Magnum ammunition found at the cemetery. They were similar in calibre, had a similar jacket and were similar "semi-wadcutters" to the bullets he had recovered from the Guerin shooting. Cross-examined by defence counsel Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, Det Sgt Ennis agreed the most he could say about the bullets found at the scene of the shooting and the bullets found in the cemetery was that they were "similar".
The trial continues today.