Kevin Lunney tells court man 'scored QIH down my stomach with Stanley knife'

• Published date: 03 June 2021
• Author: Eoin Reynolds

Mr Lunney (52) had been stripped to his boxer shorts before his attackers abandoned him on the side of a dark country road at about 9pm on a September night in 2019.

Giving evidence at the trial of four men accused of falsely imprisoning him and causing him serious harm, Mr Lunney said he dragged himself using just his left arm and left leg to a larger road, hoping a passerby would help.

From there he saw a light in the distance which he tried to crawl towards.

"I was exhausted. I could sense the blood running down my chest and I was conscious my face was bleeding. My left arm and left leg were all I could use to push myself along but I decided to push myself towards that window and kept doing that for, I don't know, a number of minutes," he said.

He said he stopped a couple of times, exhausted, before pushing on again.

"I was getting fearful that I wouldn't get there and nobody would come," he said.

When a tractor driver finally stopped, Mr Lunney said he was "violently shaking and shivering".

Someone else who stopped put a pair of pyjamas over him and when gardaí arrived they used various things to cover him.

A witness who attended the scene also described on Thursday how she gave Mr Lunney 7UP and sat with him until gardaí arrived.

An unnamed man referred to as YZ (40), Alan O'Brien (40), of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3, Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3 and Luke O'Reilly (67), with an address at Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan have all pleaded not guilty to false imprisonment and intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Lunney at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan on September 17th, 2019.

The first accused cannot be named by order of the court as he is due to face trial on other, unrelated matters.

Cross-examination

Mr Lunney took the stand on Thursday for about two hours and was briefly cross-examined by barristers representing two of the four accused.

He told prosecution counsel Sean Guerin SC that he finished work at 6.30pm and was driving up a lane that leads to his house when he saw a strange car.

He stopped and the car reversed at speed, striking his car. Two men got out, ran towards him and, following a struggle, they dragged him from his car.

A third man arrived in a black car, which Mr Lunney thought was an Audi A4 or A6, and held a Stanley knife to Mr Lunney's neck.

The men told Mr Lunney that they wanted to talk to him, that they were not going to kill him and ordered him to get into the boot of the black car.

He said: "I tried to resist, I tried to fight the individuals and resisted going in but I was simply pushed into the boot and I wasn't able to resist. As soon as the boot closed I could hear the vehicle taking off at speed."

Mr Lunney described how he pulled a lever to open the boot, prompting someone in the car to shout: "He's opened the effing boot."

Mr Lunney thought about jumping out but the car was going too fast.

He lowered his foot towards the road but when the sole of his shoe started to rip on the road surface he realised that was not going to...