Accused’s hands dripping blood, trial told

A MURDER accused asked his wife ‘what am I after doing to that boy as he was my friend?’ the day after he allegedly stabbed a Limerick man to death in a pub, his trial has heard.

Karen Crawford said her husband had ‘staggered’ towards her car with ‘blood dripping from his hands’, on the night of the incident and was ‘really upset’.

She testified that he told her he ‘needed to get his head straight’ before he handed himself into the gardaí.

Mrs Crawford was giving evidence yesterday in the Central Criminal Court trial of Mark Crawford, 43, who is charged with murdering Patrick ‘Pa’ O’Connor, 24, in Limerick city over two years ago.

Mr Crawford, with an address at Quarry Road, Thomondgate, Co. Limerick, has denied murdering Mr O’Connor at Fitzgerald’s Bar, Sexton Street, in Limerick city between July 7 and July 8, 2018.

Giving evidence yesterday, Mrs Crawford said that she was in her sister-in-law’s house when she got a phone call from her husband, on the night of July 7, asking her to collect him from Fitzgerald’s Bar.

She agreed with prosecutor John Fitzgerald SC she had told gardaí that her husband ‘sounded frightened, as if something was going to happen’.

She drove to a laneway beside Fitzgerald’s Bar and her husband ‘staggered’ down the lane with his hands out in front of him dripping blood. He had nothing in his hands, she said, adding that he was crying and kept saying, ‘Karen, Karen’.

‘I kept asking what happened and he said “something bad”. I couldn’t get a clear answer off him so I was checking [him] for injuries,’ she said.

Mrs Crawford testified that he had a cut on one hand and she drove him to his sister’s house at O’Brien’s Bridge in Clare.

‘He was going in and out of consciousness so that is why I thought he was injured,’ she said.

She drove back home after taking him to his sister’s house that night. The following day, Mrs Crawford said she went to look for him in Birdhill, Co. Tipperary.

‘He was really upset and said, “What am I after doing to that boy as he was my friend?”’ she said. She agreed with Mr Fitzgerald that she told her husband that he needed ‘to hand himself in’ but he said he ‘needed to get his head straight’.

Mrs Crawford said she then took him to the Abbey Court Hotel in Nenagh.

Under cross-examination, Mrs Crawford told defence counsel Patrick McGrath that her husband was ‘walking in a daze’ when she picked him up on the side of the road in Nenagh the following day. He met his family at a service station later that morning and told them that he could not believe he had done it, she said.

Mrs Crawford said she then brought her husband to the Garda station and he handed himself in.

In his opening address, Mr Fitzgerald said Mr Crawford is accused of stabbing Mr O’Connor to death after a row over payment for cocaine. The trial continues.