This article is from page 16 of the 2008-04-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
THE sister of the two McDonagh brothers said that “one was as bad as WsTome) 0 8(o) uae
Ann Marie O’Loughlin – said Patrick was “crying like a baby” when she and her husband arrived at the hospital that night. Patrick had been treated for injuries including a split lip, broken nose and slashed ear, received during an earlier fight with Si itbab ler
She said that Patrick insisted on going home to his wife and three children.
Ned McDonagh, a third brother, said Charlie arrived at his house at about 11.30 pm that night. He seemed drunk and was very upset about the fact that Patrick had broken the win- dow of his van during the argument.
Ned tried to calm him down, tell- ing him they could sort everything out in the morning. Ned agreed with Brendan Nix, defending, that Charlie had been known to bite people when he was drinking and was in a tem- per.
He said Charlie ran off down the street and hailed a taxi. Ned followed in a van with his brother-in-law.
The taxi driver, Paul Kelleher, agreed with Mr Nix that Charlie told him he was being chased by his
brothers who intended to hurt him,
They’re after trashing my van. I’m Court, Charlie saw that Patrick had
but also agreed that Charlie had going to kill them.”
told gardai, “They’re my brothers.
When they arrived back at Bridge
smashed the front windows of his house. Gardai were at the scene.
Charlie told Mr Kelleher he would wait until they had gone and would get a Slash hook.
Ned McDonagh told the trial that he asked gardai to arrest Charlie so that no one got hurt, but they re- GUI or6 B
The trial heard that a short time af- ter Patrick returned to his home, he received a phone call from Charlie. “Charlie was offering Patrick out- side,’ Ann Marie O’Loughlin told the trial.
Despite attempts to stop him, Patrick picked up a hatchet and went out to his brother. Charlie was stand- ing bare chested in the middle of the road, holding a knife he had taken from a neighbour’s house.
Ms O’Loughlin said that the two men started to fight. She and her hus- band eventually managed to disarm them and separate them but Patrick picked up the knife from where it had been thrown and ran towards his brother.
‘He grabbed the knife, his eyes were wide open and that’s when I went into shock.”
She said her brother Charlie was a “gentleman, 100 per cent”.