Two Sligo men charged with the serious assault of a gay American writer, Mr Robert Drake, denied they had kicked him or hit him with anything other than their fists and elbows, Sligo Circuit Court was told yesterday.
On the fourth day of the case, a Garda statement from one of the accused men, Mr Ian Monaghan (20), of Ashbrook, Pearse Road, Sligo, which was read to the court claimed Mr Drake had received, at most, three blows to the face.
Mr Monaghan and Mr Glen Mahon (21), of Banks Drive, Cranmore, Sligo, are pleading not guilty to intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to Mr Drake at his flat in Holborn Street, Sligo, on January 31st. In his statement read to the court by Det Garda Eddie McHale, Mr Monaghan said Mr Drake had given Mr Mahon and himself four glasses of sambuca when they went to his flat.
Mr Mahon had gone upstairs to the lavatory after saying he felt sick, leaving Mr Monaghan alone in the living room with Mr Drake. Mr Monaghan said he had felt "groggy and half-steamed" and when he had leaned over to get something, he had felt a hand on his back. He said Mr Drake tried to put his hand down the back of his trousers.
"Straight away I said to myself, this fellow is a queer," the statement added. He grabbed the arm of Mr Drake, who caught him by the shirt. They staggered in front of the fire and then into the kitchen. All the time, Mr Monaghan said, he was "roaring and cursing at him".
He fell flat on his stomach with Mr Drake on top of him. "I was telling him, `Fuck off, you queer', and I remember hitting him two or three times in the face," the statement went on. He said he had tried to hit Mr Drake as hard as he could but could not get "a right thump at him", telling him to "Fuck off, you filthy bastard".
On returning from the lavatory, Mr Mahon hit Mr Drake "a belt of his fist straight into the nose". Mr Drake had tried to stand up and had made for the two men. They pushed him back into the kitchen, and he was bleeding heavily from the nose. Mr Monaghan denied he had kicked Mr Drake in the head, nor did he see Mr Mahon kick him.
As they left the flat, they could hear Mr Drake moaning and shouting. A number of days later they went voluntarily to gardai.
The court also heard defence counsel, Mr Ken Fogarty SC, outline the latest update on Mr Drake's condition on the Internet. It said he was recovering well in Philadelphia, and that he was "all but a vegetable" when he had returned to the US.
He could now speak a little, with long, completed sentences, and "can even enjoy a joke or two". In his cross-examination of Det Garda Chris O'Connor, of the fingerprint section of the technical bureau, Mr Fogarty put it to him it was unusual that, in the evidence given to date, the hair of the alleged perpetrators of the crime was the least contaminated with blood.
He also suggested it was unusual for such a crime scene with blood everywhere that nobody found one microscopic speck of blood on the two accused men.
The case was adjourned until tomorrow.