A MOTHER-of-four has told a murder trial that her forty-two year-old husband cried out, "Help, help, somebody help", as he was assaulted outside their family home in Derry two years ago.
Three members of the same family - husband and wife James (39) and Brenda Meehan (40) and Mrs. Meehan's son Sean Devenney (21) - deny murdering Jim McFadden in the early hours of May 5, 2007.
Admissions to the manslaughter of Mr. McFadden by the d
efendants James Meehan and Sean Devenney have already been rejected by the prosecution.
Mrs Ita McFadden told the jury at Derry Crown Court sitting in Coleraine yesterday that the attack on her husband occurred outside their Moyola Drive home after she, her husband and their four children had earlier attended her sister's wedding and wedding reception.
The three defendants, all from Dundrean Park in Derry, were also guests at the same wedding and the fatal attack on Mr. McFadden followed an incident at the reception involving the defendant Devenney and the victim's sixteen years-old daughter Ashling.
Mrs McFadden told Mr Justice McCloskey that she saw the three defendants going towards her husband after her family had returned from the Redcastle Hotel wedding reception on a bus.
The witness said her daughter Danielle, who was then aged fifteen years, threw a crutch she'd been given for a leg injury towards her father to enable him to defend himself. She told the jurors that the defendant James Meehan reached her husband first.
"He started pounding on Jim, punching him. He just wouldn't let him go. He kept battering him, battering him. Jim ended up in a neighbour's garden. James Meehan kept pounding him," she said.
Mrs McFadden said she then heard her injured husband calling "Help, help, somebody help" but James Meehan kept attacking him.
‘Punching, kicking, thumping’
"He was just beating him stupid,” she continued. “He was banging him, punching him, kicking him, thumping him.”
The witness said that, as she ran to a neighbour's house for help, Brenda Meehan knocked her to the ground.
"She had a piece of wood or a bat in her hand. Brenda Meehan actually pushed me to the ground", she said.
Mrs McFadden said she then followed the ambulance which took her fatally injured husband to Altnagelvin Hospital. There, a doctor told her her husband was dead.
"I was permitted to go into the room to see him. I stayed there for a short time", she said.
The trial continues.
