A credit union volunteer broke down crying as she told a murder trial of the moment she thought a robber was going to kill her after she witnessed the fatal shooting of a garda.
Bernadette McShane was sitting in her car when she heard a loud bang and saw Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe fall to the ground.
“When I saw the man running towards me I thought he was coming to kill me because I had seen too much,” she said.
Aaron Brady (28) from New Road, Crossmaglen, Co Armagh has pleaded not guilty to the capital murder of Det Garda Adrian Donohoe on January 25th, 2013 at Lordship Credit Union, Bellurgan, Co Louth.
Mr Brady has also pleaded not guilty to a charge of robbing approximately €7,000 in cash and assorted cheques on the same date and at the same location. Ms McShane told prosecution counsel Dean Kelly BL that she worked as a volunteer for the Lordship Credit Union.
On the Friday night in question she counted the money and cheques from the tills and gave it to her colleague Pat Bellew who was to travel to Dundalk with a Garda escort to a safety deposit box. The unmarked Garda car arrived at about 9.25pm.
In the carpark Ms McShane got into her car and she saw Mr Bellew begin to pull off in his own car. As Ms McShane started her own car she heard two loud bangs. “I thought they were fireworks and turned to look to where the other cars were parked and I saw men running.”
Duck reaction
She said she saw one of the detectives falling to the ground and at first thought it was a “duck reaction, like he was jumping to avoid something.”
She added: “When he didn’t move I realised it must have been a gun shot.”
She saw people running all around the car park towards the detectives and towards Mr Bellew’s car.
One of the men started running towards her.
Ms McShane began to cry before continuing: “At that stage, when I saw the man running towards me I thought he was coming to kill me because I had seen too much.”
The man smashed her car window, she said, and shouted: “Give me the f**king money.”
When she told him she had none he demanded her handbag which she threw towards him. He then told her to open the glove box, which she did, revealing there was nothing inside.
She heard a voice from somewhere saying, “Are you right there lads?” and the man ran off and jumped over the front wall of the credit union.
When Mr Kelly asked her for information about the man she had seen, she said: “I was afraid to look but I did see a man there in dark clothes with a balaclava. But my fear was that if I looked and took in too much information he might kill me because I would know too much.”
She thought she saw a walkie talkie in the man's hand but she couldn't be sure. She said the man was not slim but "on the bulky side" and he was agile in the way he jumped over the wall. She couldn't place his accent although she knew it wasn't a strong Belfast or north Antrim accent.
The man she heard saying “are you right there lads” had a different accent but she couldn’t place it.
Dublin accent
In cross examination, the witness agreed with Fiona Murphy SC for the defence that in her statements to gardaí she said that the man she saw was five feet eight or nine inches and had a Dublin accent. In a follow-up statement she said she is not great with accents but was sure it wasn’t a Northern Irish accent.
When a Dublin garda said, “give me the f**ing money” it reminded her of the way the raider had said it.
Mary Hanlon told Brendan Grehan SC for the prosecution that she is the treasurer and a volunteer for the Cooley Credit Union which has two sub offices in Carlingford and Omeath.
Part of her job was to collect cash from the three offices on a Friday evening to bring it to the safety deposit box in Dundalk. Along the way she would be joined by someone from the Lordship Credit Union who was also going to lodge cash in the safety deposit box.
Ms Hanlon had a bag with more than €27,000 in it on the night. They arrived at Lordship at 9.26pm, the time when Ms Hanlon called Pat Bellew of the Lordship credit union on her mobile phone to tell him she was in the carpark with the Garda escort.
She remained in her car and said she did not notice anything until she saw Mr Bellew’s car lights come on.
Ms Hanlon moved towards the carpark gates but intended to wait until Mr Bellew was behind her and the unmarked Garda car behind him. As she pulled up to the gate a car pulled in front of her, blocking the exit. “I thought they were going to make a phone call or something like that.”
Blonde hair
She thought the driver of the car was an Irish woman, she said, with blonde hair and a beanie style hat on.
She remembered thinking, “you stupid bitch, why are you parked there,” but she was waiting for Mr Bellew so she didn’t flash her lights or try to get the person to move.
The driver was staring straight ahead and never looked in the direction of the witness.
Ms Hanlon thought the car was a Volkswagen Passat and she had a good view of it with her lights on. The witness was using a bluetooth device to talk to her friend when she heard two loud bangs on her left side and behind her.
“With that, very quickly, a fella ran out between my passenger door and the side wall of the car park,” she said.
She hung up the phone and her car radio started up automatically. She saw a man with a long gun by his side which she believed to be a shotgun. He was wearing green combat trousers.
Another man had a long bar, “something you might use to ram a door”, the witness said. She believed that the banging noise she had heard was the gardai firing at the raiders and when she saw the raiders get into the car and leave she believed the gardai had run them off.
None of the raiders came to Ms Hanlon’s car or interfered with her in any way and she did not hear any of them speak.
She realised some time later that Det Garda Donohoe had been shot when she got out of her car and saw his wounds. She looked away. “I didn’t want to dwell on it,” she said.
Glass smashed
Pat Bellew told Mr Grehan that he was getting ready to join the convoy with Ms Hanlon and the gardaí when he noticed a number of people coming over the back wall of the credit union just behind his car. One of them came to his car and Mr Bellew heard an “enormous bang and my driver’s door glass smashed.”
The raider reached across Mr Bellew towards the front passenger seat where he had put the evening’s takings. The man then ran around the front of the car and opened the passenger door.
Mr Bellew said: “I wasn’t staring at him, I didn’t want to.”
The man took the bag and some envelopes and then opened the back doors where Mr Bellew had left a laptop bag which he later discovered was missing. Mr Bellew didn’t hear the robber say anything.
When he realised the raiders were gone, he got out of his car and saw Detective Garda Joe Ryan who appeared “agitated” and seemed to be struggling to get through to garda control.
When Mr Bellew saw Det Garda Donohoe on the ground he presumed he was dead.
Mr Bellew had a cut on his face from the smashed glass and was treated by emergency personnel at the scene.
The jury also heard from Stephen Toal who told Mr Grehan he was driving in Lordship at about 9.25pm on the same night and saw what he believed to be a Volkswagen Passat overtake him going “extremely fast”.
A passenger in Mr Toal’s car, Felix Smith, said the car sounded like it was going as fast as it possibly could in third gear.
He said: “I said to Stephen, look at that eejit, he won’t have that car long.”
The driver appeared to be able to handle the car, he said, as when it arrived at the Ballymascanlon roundabout Mr Smith thought the car would skid on the wet road but the driver jammed on the brakes and pulled into the inside lane and waited for the roundabout to clear.
The trial continues in front Mr Justice Michael White and a jury of eight men and seven women.