Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
DAD WAS NOT TRYING11 TO SAVE ANITA..HE WAS CUTTING AT HER HEAD
Teen rejects defence claim by lawyer at murder trial
A TEENAGER who alleges he saw his father trying to chop off his fiancee’s head rejected a claim he was trying to stop her neck bleeding.
The son was being cross-examined at the trial of David Lyness, 52, who denies murdering 51-year-old Anita Downey at his Co Armagh home last year.
A defence lawyer asked: “Was your father trying to stop the flow of blood, do you remember that?”
The teenager replied: “No. He wasn’t doing that.” The lawyer asked him again what was he doing and the witness said: “Cutting her.”
Several other suggestions were put to the youth before the barrister suggested: “What you saw was your father trying to stop the flow of blood from Anita’s neck.”
The teenager replied: “No. That wasn’t the case.”
Craigavon Crown Court has already heard Ms Downey had her throat cut back to her spine and Lyness allegedly threatened to kill himself rather than go to jail. Yesterday a barrister asked the teenager about the relationship between his dad and the deceased, and whether the accused had told him his former girlfriend had attacked him with scissors.
While agreeing he had been told this and accepting their romance was over, the teenager said he had never heard of Ms Downey attacking his father with a knife or that he was afraid of her.
The witness told the trial sitting in Belfast before Judge Geoffrey Miller he gave an accurate account of the incident to police. But the lawyer suggested his mind may have been affected by seeing the deceased’s injuries and he had “assumed his father did this terrible thing”.
The teenager replied” “No. I witnessed it with my own two eyes.”
The barrister also suggested to him there were differences in his videoed police interview and his descriptions of what happened at the house in Toberhewny Hall, Lurgan, on January 20 last year.
The teenager said: “It was traumatic... I was distressed and distraught and I might have got a few things mixed up.”
However, the teenager added he “didn’t remember” telling another officer Ms Downey had “slapped” his dad.
The lawyer suggested at one stage the witness saw his dad and Ms Downey “struggling” over her handbag.
The teenager added: “I have no memory of that.”
The witness added any difference in what he may have said about what his dad did prior to allegedly cutting Ms Downey’s neck was “a minor error”.
At hearing.
COURT YESTERDAY