Woman who stabbed boyfriend to death tells court fight was 'probably over something stupid'
A woman who stabbed her boyfriend to death told gardaí that they were probably fighting about something stupid and that she "wasn’t letting him get the better" of her when she stabbed him.
The mother-of-three described the 30-year-old as a lovely, good person and herself as "good craic" when interviewed by gardaí after stabbing him four times in her Drogheda home.
Paula Farrell (aged 46) of Rathmullen Park in the town is on trial at the Central Criminal Court, where she has pleaded not guilty to murdering Wayne McQuillan, but guilty to his manslaughter on New Year’s morning in 2014.
Garda Yvonne Geraghty testified today that she interviewed the accused following her arrest.
She said that Ms Farrell had explained that neither she nor the deceased had worked at the time and that he had "practically" lived with her and her youngest child.
Gda Geraghty told Gerard Clarke SC, prosecuting, that the accused had described her relationship with Mr McQuillan as "brilliant".
“We wouldn’t always be arguing,” she had said.
“Funny, always laughing, a lovely person, always smiling. He was just a good person,” she had replied, when asked to describe him.
The accused had said that he could sometimes get "moody" with drink, but "would be grand" at other times.
She said that she would drink every day if she could but that, financially, she couldn’t. She was an alcoholic, she said.
Ms Farrell said that she was "not really" aggressive.
She added:
“I'm good craic when I’m out with the girls. I’m a good laugh.”
She explained that she was on medication for schizophrenia, depression and asthma, but had not taken her medication on New Year’s Eve as she was drinking.
The defendant recalled that she and the deceased had bought his cider in Lidl that day, and the jury saw footage of them doing so. She said that he had then gone to Centra to get her Bulmers.
“He bought me three packs with eight in each pack,” she recalled. “We were to go on the drink.”
She said that they had started drinking about 3.30pm and that she had drunk about nine or ten cans by the time they rang in the New Year in the house.
“We started bitching at each other,” she recalled.
Gardaí asked her what they had been fighting about.
“Probably something stupid like always,” she replied, confirming that it had been physical.
“He knocked me and I fell back,” she continued.
“He was getting the better of me. I went over to my kitchen sink to my knife block, got a knife and stuck it in him.”
She said that he had walked outside afterwards, holding his chest.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she said.
Ms Farrell said that there had been physical violence between them once or twice previously, but couldn’t recall what about.
She was asked about her own injuries, photographs of which had already been shown to the jury. She said that he had caused them during the fight.
“He was on top of me on the chair, strangling me,” she said.
“He grabbed my head and hit it off the wall…. I got him off me and I wasn’t letting him get the better of me.”
She said that she had gone outside afterwards and apologised to him.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” she concluded.
