A 32-year-old man accused of murdering his former girlfriend spent the night before following her around at a New Year\u2019s Eve party, a jury has heard.<\/p>\n
Maria Fonseca told the trial of Miller Pacheco that she and her aunt Bruna Fonseca (28) went to a special New Year\u2019s Eve party for Brazilians in the Oyster Tavern in Cork on December 31st, 2022 where they met Mr Pacheco.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went there about 10pm. I did see Miller there later, at around 11pm. I just said \u2018Hello\u2019. He was trying to speak to Bruna. He was following us around all the time \u2013 we were trying to get away from him,\u201d said Ms Fonseca,<\/p>\n
Mr Pacheco, a Brazilian national whose full name is Miller Misserani da Cunha Bello Pacheco, has denied the murder of Bruna Fonseca at his apartment at Liberty Street in Cork on January 1st, 2023.<\/p>\n
Ms Fonseca told the jury of five men and seven women at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork that she and her aunt had come to Ireland on September 23rd, 2022 to learn English as Bruna\u2019s cousin, Marcela Fonseca, had done earlier.<\/p>\n
She said Bruna and Mr Miller had been in a relationship for about five years and had been living in Sao Paulo where she worked in a library and he worked as an engineer, but she returned to her hometown of Formiga in Minas Gerais province when the relationship ended.<\/p>\n
Mr Pacheco had kept in contact with her but did not want to come to Ireland with her when she was buying the tickets. He later arrived in Cork on November 18th and they began the relationship again living together in a flat in Blackpool but it only lasted three days, said Ms Fonseca.<\/p>\n
Ms Fonseca told how she had met her aunt after she had finished work on the evening of December 31st, 2022 and she was upset and crying as she had found a knife in a bag belonging to Mr Pacheco and she feared he was going to try and kill himself with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met Bruna in Marcela\u2019s flat on Barrack Street that evening \u2013 she was upset because she had found a knife in Miller\u2019s bag and she was afraid Miller was going to harm himself \u2013 Bruna was never afraid of Miller,\u201d Ms Fonseca told Mr Pacheco\u2019s counsel, Ray Boland SC.<\/p>\n
She said that later that night, Bruna did not have much to drink at the Brazilian party at the Oyster Tavern, perhaps two glasses, and Mr Pacheco could see her dancing with other men at the party but he showed no reaction.<\/p>\n
She said that she and Bruna left the Oyster Tavern and when she asked Bruna where she was going, she said that she was going home and they parted company and that was the last time she saw Bruna alive.<\/p>\n
Maria Fonseca\u2019s mother and Bruna\u2019s older sister, Izabel Fonseca, told the trial that Mr Pacheco and Bruna broke up some time after January 2022 but that they got back together closer to the time that Bruna was travelling to Ireland.<\/p>\n
Cross-examined by Mr Boland SC, Ms Fonseca said that Bruna had often expressed to her that she feared that Mr Pacheco would hurt himself but she was not aware that he had problems with his mental health in that he suffered from depression.<\/p>\n
Earlier the jury heard evidence from Cristina Martinescu and her boyfriend Lucas Leon who were staying at another flat in the Liberty Street building, and they told how they were awoken at around 5am on New Year\u2019s Day by the sound of a woman screaming.<\/p>\n
Ms Martinescu said that it was a scream without any words and it sounded like a woman screaming with her mouth covered so she woke her boyfriend, but the screaming stopped, and they didn\u2019t think any more of it.<\/p>\n
Mr Leon said that they later heard footsteps running on the stairs and he heard three voices \u2013 two females and a man speaking in Portuguese and one of the women spoke loudly and said to the man, \u2018You killed her \u2013 you are a murderer.\u201d The case continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 32-year-old man accused of murdering his former girlfriend spent the night before following her around at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,142505,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-285188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-bruna-fonseca","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115897432900144314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285188","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=285188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}