A man on trial for murder has claimed in evidence to a jury that his then partner carried out the killing and he tried to protect her as he believed she was pregnant with his child.<\/p>\n
Daniel Hourigan (33) who is originally from Farranree in Cork city is on trial at a sitting of the Central Criminal Court in the city charged with the murder of 61 year old Michael Foley. He denies the murder of the west Cork native.<\/p>\n
Foley lived in a Housing First property at Annville, Barrett\u2019s Place in Macroom, Co Cork.<\/p>\n
He was found dead by a care worker on February 6th, 2024.<\/p>\n
Hourigan opted to give evidence to the jury this afternoon. His former partner Linda O\u2019Flynn, who is a native of Hollyhill in Cork city, is not a party to this trial.<\/p>\n
Hourigan said that Foley was a \u201crelative through marriage\u201d and that he had stayed in his home in Macroom for six weeks in 2023 when he was in need of accommodation.<\/p>\n
He said that he had gone to the home of Foley in Macroom on January 31st, 2024 accompanied by O\u2019Flynn. Then the couple stayed overnight.<\/p>\n
He told the jury that he woke during the night to the \u201csound of the place being broken up and stuff being moved around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hourigan said that he got out of bed and went to the door of the kitchen where he saw O\u2019Flynn. He indicated that his then partner \u201cwas freaking out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer hands were on her head. She was not kind of making sense at first. I said, \u2018Linda what are you after doing?\u2019 Michael was on the floor. I saw the pool of blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hourigan said that he asked O\u2019Flynn to call for an ambulance but she said that there was \u201cno ambulance being rang.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that he had tried to lift Foley onto the sofa but found himself unable to do so. He stated that he put a cushion under his head and checked for a pulse. He detected a faint pulse.<\/p>\n
He indicated that when he \u201clooked at him (Foley), first it looked like he was asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stated that at that point O\u2019Flynn was saying “help me, help me.”<\/p>\n
He said that he started wiping the floor. He also claimed that O\u2019Flynn was \u201cbagging stuff in a black bag.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hourigan stated that he went to the bathroom to wash his hands and that when he returned his partner had already left the property.<\/p>\n
He claimed O\u2019Flynn was at the end of the road when he left the house. He said that they subsequently boarded a bus to Cork city.<\/p>\n
He stated that he felt a \u201cwave of emotions\u201d on the bus. However, Hourigan said that O\u2019Flynn was acting \u201clike nothing had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hourigan told the jury that at the time his belief was that O\u2019Flynn was pregnant with his baby. He said that Foley had agreed to be the Godfather to his unborn child.<\/p>\n
Hourigan insisted he had \u201cno part or role in Michael\u2019s murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jane Hyland, for the Prosecution, put it to Hourigan that he had told garda\u00ed a number of different versions of what had occurred. Over the course of the cross examination Hourigan insisted that he was \u201cprotecting Linda from what she had done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hyland asked Hourigan why he hadn\u2019t called an ambulance for a man \u201cwho was like an uncle\u201d to him. He said that O\u2019Flynn was in possession of the phone.<\/p>\n
Hyland asked him why he was \u201cholding hands\u201d with O\u2019Flynn on the bus given what he claimed had occurred. He said that O\u2019Flynn had \u201cheld his hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that he was \u201cdistressed\u201d and \u201cshocked by seeing what had been done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hourigan said that by the time he got on the bus his focus was on getting his next fix of drugs rather than on calling an ambulance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how bad I was in my addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hyland put it to Hourigan that the blows and wounds inflicted on Foley were made by a person \u201cwith strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
He again insisted that he \u201cdidn\u2019t inflict them injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hourigan also claimed that he had received a threatening phone call from an unidentified person that he (Hourigan) \u201cwould be next if I did not keep Linda O\u2019Flynn out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial will continue on Tuesday in front of Judge Siobhan Lankford and a jury of six men and six women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man on trial for murder has claimed in evidence to a jury that his then partner carried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-548245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548245","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=548245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}