50-year-old Anthony Kelly of O’Malley Park, Southill is accused of shooting her son two years ago after a dispute.
Mr Kelly has pleaded not guilty to the possession of a Glock semiautomatic pistol with the intent to endanger life on that date.
27-year-old Michael Lynch suffered a gunshot wound to the back near to Mr Kelly’s home, after Mr Lynch’s mother returned home the night before the shooting to discover an argument between her son, Gerard and Mr Kelly’s daughter Jessica.
The court heard in evidence that Jessica left the Lynch house and said she was returning home to get her father who was “going to come down and sort the lot of us out”.
Ms Lynch said that she left her home to speak with Mr Kelly to make sure he didn’t get the wrong story.
While at the house, she said that she exchanged blows with Jessica Kelly before returning home with cuts and scratches to her face.
Her evidence continued and Ms Lynch said that her “sons were very angry and said they were going up to Jessica about it. Ms Lynch said she followed her sons up and told the court that “Anthony Kelly told me: If you don’t take them away I’ll shoot them”.
Standing in the road with Mr Kelly at his home, Ms Lynch said;
“The next thing I can remember is Anthony Kelly pulling a gun from behind his back and pointing it”. She said that three shots were fired and that Mr Kelly ran out after her sons and wounded Michael Lynch with the fourth shot.
John O’Sullivan, prosecution for the State, told the jury that a 12-year-old boy and son of the accused, Daniel Kelly, took a Glock pistol “and certain items” to the neighbouring house of Tony McDonald after it was used to shoot a man involved in an argument. The handgun was found a month later with another gun and some ammunition in a bucket at a county Limerick house.
Cross-examining the State witness, Brendan Nix counsel for the accused put it to Ms Lynch that her three sons were well used to violent crime and she accepted that her son Michael had been jailed in January for three years for aggravated burglary. The court also heard that he received a suspended sentence for assault, causing harm to a man who was robbed of his mobile phone and left unconscious near a graveyard in Limerick city.
Ms Lynch also accepted that her son Gerard had received a suspended sentence for an incident in Sixmilebridge where both himself and his brother Michael broke into a house in the early hours of the morning, armed with samurai swords.
12 days after his release from a lengthy prison sentence, Ms Lynch also accepted that her third son, Fintan, was found in a rented bedroom of the Travelodge Hotel in Coonagh armed with a machine gun and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Mr Nix during cross-examination, put it to Ms Lynch that her sons, and in this case her son Michael was no stranger to violent crime. She replied, “he doesn’t seem to be”.
The court heard that Michael Lynch and his brother Gerard went to the house of Anthony Kelly on the morning that Ms Lynch returned with cuts and scratches to her face.
“They were very upset at the state of my face”, she added.
“They were just going to give out to her about what had happened”.
She denied that her sons went to Mr Kelly’s house “tooled up with guns,” after Mr Nix suggested that they would have very ready access to firearms suggesting that “Fintan could get pistols for the boys”.
The jury of seven men and five women began hearing evidence in the trial last Tuesday after Mr Kelly pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The trial is set to last four weeks but will resume later this week after Judge Carroll Moran heard that concerns were raised over the quality of the technology available to the court to show CCTV footage to the jury.
The matter was temporarily adjourned to allow smaller monitors be installed to let the jurors have an undistorted view of the footage.
The trial continues.