A Dublin man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with the murder of his father, who died from multiple blows to the head with a hurley and a hammer.
Edward Brady (25), Glenshane Grove, Tallaght has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Thomas Brady (50), but denies murdering him on January 19th, 2005 at Dolphin House, Dublin.
Opening the case for the prosecution Mr Shane Murphy SC said the deceased man lived alone at Dolphin House and was the divorced father of six children.
Prior to his death he had been studying computer science at Crumlin College, where he was a mature student.
Mr Murphy said that on January 19th at 7.42pm, Edward Brady telephoned Dublin Fire Brigade and said he had found his father in a pool of blood. A hammer with a broken handle and a hurley were lying near the body. Mr Brady was taken to St James's Hospital where attempts to resuscitate him failed and he was pronounced dead at 8.07pm.
Mr Murphy said the jury would hear evidence from assistant State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis that the deceased had died from severe head injuries due to multiple blows to the head.
He had a fracturedskull and had underlying brain damage. Some of the injuries were consistent with being caused by the head of a hammer. He also had injuries to his neck that could have been a contributing factor to his death, and injuries to his hands that could have been defence injuries.
Mr Murphy said Edward Brady initially denied his involvement but later confessed to killing his father in a statement to gardaí.
Asked how the argument had started, he told gardaí: "We started arguing over loads of sh*** we shouldn't even have been arguing over." He claimed his father had initially hit him with a hurley in his left arm and he responded by hitting him with a hammer, he thought, across the side of his face.
He said they were in the bedroom of the flat and his father fell on to his knees.
He said his father then picked up something else but didn't hit him with it and added: "I just couldn't stop hitting him when I saw all the blood come out."
His father got up again and the accused said: "He was smaller than me and I just kept hitting down on him."
He said he also hit his father with the hurley when the hammer fell out of his hand.
He told gardaí: "He just kept asking me to stop. He said we shouldn't be fighting like this." Mr Brady jnr later said he was arguing with his father about his mother. He said his father wanted to sell the house in Tallaght and "was on about my ma's fella living in the house".
He said he did not mean to kill his father. Asked how he felt, he replied: "I feel like sh***."
Mr Murphy put it to the jury that this was a case not merely of unlawful killing, but one in which the accused had intended to kill or cause serious injury to his father. A jury has been sworn in to hear the case, which continues today before Mr Justice Philip O'Sullivan.