Michael Scott reversed over his 76-year-old aunt Chrissie Treacy in a “deliberate act of murder out of a sense of entitlement and for revenge”, a prosecution barrister has told the Central Criminal Court.
Michael Scott (58) of Gortanumera, Portumna, Co. Galway has pleaded not guilty to murdering Chrissie Treacy outside her home in Derryhiney, Portumna, Co. Galway on April 27, 2018.
The prosecution case is that Scott deliberately reversed over Chrissie Treacy in an agricultural teleporter following a long-running dispute over land.
Scott’s lawyers have told the Central Criminal Court that her death was a tragic accident.
Closing speeches in murder trial
Delivering his closing speech to the jury, senior counsel Dean Kelly, said that Scott had told big lies, little lies and enormous lies about his relationship with Chrissie Treacy in the lead-up to her death.
The court heard claims that he also lied about how her decision to partition 140ac of land they jointly owned would impact his farming business.
There was also, he said, evidence that Scott had made “clear and direct threats” to do harm to Chrissie Treacy.
Before Chrissie Treacy was struck by an agricultural teleporter driven by the accused, Dean Kelly said she was “there to be seen” in the yard beside her home either standing still or moving “exceptionally slowly” due to her age and ill-health.
The lawyer showed the jury photographs taken from inside the teleporter cabin which, he said, showed that Chrissie Treacy, wearing her light blue cardigan, would have been visible through the rear window.
The account given by Michael Scott, in which he said that he was reversing the teleporter but did not see Chrissie Treacy, was “self-serving, dishonest, nonsense,” the senior counsel told the court.
Dean Kelly pointed to what he called the “geometric precision” with which the teleporter ran over Chrissie Treacy from her right toe to her extended left hand, “crushing everything in its path” including her organs and pelvis, and removing the flesh from her left hand.
“Imagine the precision of that,” he said. “How unfortunate would you have to be for that to happen by accident?”
“This was a deliberate act of murder out of a sense of entitlement and revenge.”
Defence counsel Paul Greene has begun his closing address to the jury this afternoon.
By Eoin Reynolds