A jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court has been told that gardai searched a Drimnagh house at 3.30 a.m. within hours of a Nigerian national incorrectly giving them the address as his own.
Garda Larry Clare agreed with defence counsel, Mr Niall Durnin, that it was an unusual time for such a search but gardai were afraid stolen property might be moved. He said he had initiated the investigation into a stolen credit cards racket after arresting two Nigerian nationals hours earlier.
The court previously heard that the two Nigerians gave their addresses as two adjacent houses on Rafters Road, Drimnagh. Mr Wantete lived with his wife and children in one of them.
Garda Clare agreed with Mr Durnin that it was reasonable to assume the Nigerians would not give a correct address.
He was giving evidence on the second day of the trial of a Zairean national charged with assaulting gardai and resisting and obstructing arrest at his home on Rafters Road on May 1st, 1998.
Mr Belmondo Wantete Mukulu (33), married with a family, has denied assaulting gardai Sean Collum and Gearoid McCarthy, causing them harm, and also of resisting and obstructing Det Sgt Gus Keane on the same occasion.
Garda Clare told prosecution counsel Mr Dominic McGinn when they knocked on the door, Mr Wantete appeared at the window and they identified themselves as gardai who wanted to search the house. Mr Wantete told them to "go away, come back in the morning".
Det Sgt Keane forced open the front door and they met Mr Wantete in the hallway. He was agitated. The house was searched and at a certain point the accused had to be cautioned he was being arrested. Garda Clare said the accused went to a bedroom and returned with what seemed to be a table leg and waved it at them.
There was a struggle during which the light and couch were broken. They eventually handcuffed the accused who continued to resist them. Garda Clare said he witnessed the accused bite Garda Collum on the neck and kick Garda McCarthy.
He had to be carried to the garda van. He denied Mr Durnin's suggestion that the gardai racially abused Mr Wantete and called his children monkeys. He also denied that Det Sgt Keane put his gun barrel through the letter-box or that he again produced the gun inside.
Gardai Collum and McCarthty denied conferring with each other before giving their statements on Mr Wantete's arrest, as suggested by defence counsel Mr Durnin and Ms Aileen Donnelly.
The jury heard gardai Collum and McCarthy misspelled Mr Wantete's name in the exact same way for almost halfway through their individual statements. They had both started correcting their mistakes after a while.
Ms Donnelly pointed out that the arrest record contained "Wantenta", the same wrong spelling that he had been using earlier. Mr Durnin asked Garda McCarthy if he had some "divine inspiration" while he was writing the statement that made him correct the mistakes "all of a sudden". Garda McCarthy said he found the foreign name difficult to spell but said he couldn't explain why he had suddenly started correcting the mistakes.
Garda McCarthy denied the suggestion by Mr Durnin that they would have searched the adjacent house also if it had not been opened by a white person. He agreed with counsel "there was always the possibility" that the occupants of the house were black. The hearing continues before Judge Yvonne Murphy.