A secondary school teacher claims she \u201cscreamed out in agony\u201d after a male garda allegedly twisted her arm until it broke following her arrest after an altercation on a night out. <\/p>\n
Denise Callinan, at the time a 23-year-old teacher of physical education and biology, said she had been subjected to a half-hour-long interrogation by five garda\u00ed at Mill Street Garda Station in Galway City in the early hours of October 19, 2019. <\/p>\n
Ms Callinan had sued the Garda Commissioner demanding damages for the alleged assault. <\/p>\n
She told a High Court jury that she had been arrested by two male garda\u00ed after getting into a \u201cheated\u201d argument with her brother near Eyre Square at about 3am on that date. <\/p>\n
She said that having been taken to the garda station on Mill St she was asked \u201cincessant questions\u201d in the station\u2019s reception area regarding her brother\u2019s whereabouts and felt that the questioning garda\u00ed \u201cwhere getting furious at me as they felt I had information that I didn\u2019t have\u201d.<\/p>\n
“Then I was approached by a male garda from behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n He grabbed my left wrist and twisted it higher and higher while shouting \u2018tell us, tell us, tell us\u2019.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cI could tell something had happened as I screamed out in agony and was in severe pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I knew it was broken, I played sport for years. I knew that this man has broken my arm, I was hysterical,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The court, before Justice Tony O\u2019Connor, heard that a subsequent X-ray of the plaintiff showed she had suffered a spiral fracture of her left humerus, following which her arm was placed in cast for eight weeks, during which time she could not work or engage in sport, having played volleyball and football prior to the alleged incident. <\/p>\n
Ms Callinan said that she had suffered from severe mental health issues in the wake of the alleged assault, culminating in \u201ca pretty severe incident of self-harm\u201d following a prolonged period of sleeplessness in September 2020. <\/p>\n
She acknowledged that she had pleaded guilty to resisting arrest on the night of October 19, saying she did so to \u201cprotect my career\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said that what had happened that night was \u201cnot my finest hour\u201d and that she regretted resisting arrest, but had done so as she felt like she \u201cwas being attacked\u201d. <\/p>\n
She described as \u201ca lie\u201d the suggestion by arresting Garda Austin Cunningham that she had given her brother a kiss on the street.<\/p>\n
When it was put to her that she had said to her brother at the time \u201cyou hurt my arm\u201d she replied \u201cthat is not true at all\u201d. <\/p>\n
She was told that the garda\u00ed present had insisted that she was not thrown on the ground when arrested, replying \u201cI have very good co-ordination and would not just fall to the ground\u201d. <\/p>\n
Informed that a garda witness would be testifying that, while in a cell at Mill St, she shouted at her brother in an adjacent cell \u2018you broke my arm\u2019, Ms Callinan replied \u201che was saying \u2018you broke my sister\u2019s arm, how could you\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
Put to her that all of the garda\u00ed present on the night would say she was not thrown into the cell after the alleged arm-breaking incident, Ms Callinan said \u201dof course they\u2019re all going to agree, they\u2019re one big family\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A secondary school teacher claims she \u201cscreamed out in agony\u201d after a male garda allegedly twisted her arm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54,7782,61,60,43,135313],"class_list":["post-279557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-courts","tag-gardai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-place-galway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}