A 61-year-old suffered 30 stab and slash wounds to the head and body and died from bleeding and shock as a result, a jury has heard in the trial of a man and woman accused of the man\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n
Father-of-four Michael Foley was found dead at his rented chalet at Annville, Barrett\u2019s Place, Macroom, Co Cork.<\/p>\n
Daniel Hourigan (32) and Linda O\u2019Flynn (32) both deny the murder of Foley at that address between January 31st and February 1st 2024.<\/p>\n
At the Central Criminal Court on Wednesday, Dr Margot Bolster gave evidence of the various wounds and injuries that she found on Foley\u2019s body when she conducted a postmortem on his remains at Cork University Hospital after he was found dead in the chalet on February 6th, 2024.<\/p>\n
Dr Bolster listed out the catalogue of wounds that she found on Mr Foley including 11 stab wounds mainly to the body and 19 slash or incision wounds mainly to the head area.<\/p>\n
One of the stab wounds pierced Mr Foley\u2019s right lung, leading to its collapse and one of the slash wounds penetrated his skull. <\/p>\n
Dr Bolster said many of the slash and stab wounds to Mr Foley\u2019s hands and arms were of a defensive nature while she also found evidence of approximately 30 bruises and lacerations all over his body including several to his legs, but she found no evidence of any bones being broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe slash wounds to the head would cause major bleeding and a slash wound to the head can alone cause death but there is no evidence that a slash wound alone caused death in this case, and it was a combination of all the stab and slash injuries that led to death,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Dr Bolster was shown a knife with a 21cm blade which garda\u00ed seized as part of their investigation into the murder and she confirmed that the wounds suffered by Foley were caused by that knife or a similar type knife with a similarly long blade.<\/p>\n
Dr Bolster also told she took blood samples from Foley\u2019s body at postmortem and toxicology tests revealed that he had a blood alcohol concentration of 227mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood which was over four times the legal driving limit.<\/p>\n
Cross-examined by defence counsel for Mr Hourigan, Ray Boland SC, Dr Bolster agreed that an alcohol concentration level of 227mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood would impact on a person\u2019s ability to defend themselves impairing both their judgment and their co-ordination.<\/p>\n
The trial before a jury of nine men and three women also heard evidence from fingerprint expert Dr Craig Mullen of Forensic Science Ireland who confirmed that a palm print found on a doorframe at Foley\u2019s flat matched Mr Hourigan\u2019s left palm print.<\/p>\n
He also confirmed a fingerprint found on a mug found at Foley\u2019s flat matched a print from Ms O\u2019Flynn\u2019s right ring finger. He confirmed to Ms O\u2019Flynn\u2019s counsel, Donal O\u2019Sullivan SC, that he did not find her prints or any identifiable prints on a roll of black plastic bags.<\/p>\n
The trial had previously heard evidence from community care nurse, Ciara Harmon that she had found Foley lying in a pool of blood in his kitchen when she called to check just before lunch hour on February 6th after he failed to keep an appointment.<\/p>\n
One of the first garda\u00ed to arrive at the scene, Det Garda Fintan Coffey of Macroom Garda station, told the court when he arrived at the chalet, he saw that \u201cthere was a substantial amount of blood on the floor and there appeared to be footmarks in it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Det Garda Coffey said the deceased had a jacket draped across the bottom half of his torso and what he described as \u201ca very nasty injury to his left ear\u201d while there was also a large blood splatter on the wall. <\/p>\n
The case continues before the jury and Ms Justice Siobh\u00e1n Lankford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 61-year-old suffered 30 stab and slash wounds to the head and body and died from bleeding and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,1877,60926,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-177901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-cork","12":"tag-cork-university-hospital-cuh","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115540682612634227","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}