The father of a two-year-old boy, found seriously injured at the home of a woman accused of murdering the boy, has recounted how he returned in the early hours to find his daughter unconscious under a blanket on a sofa.
Michael Cawley, 37, recounted how he returned to Karen Harrington’s duplex apartment in Elderwood in Cork shortly after 5am to find the place in a mess and his daughter, Santina, lying naked and unconscious on a sofa.
Mr Cawley was giving evidence on the third day of the trial of Mrs Harrington (38) of Lakelands Crescent, Mahon, Cork, who denied the murder of Santina Cawley in Elderwood Park, Boreenamanna Road, on 5 July 2019.
Cawley told the jury of seven men and five women: “I could see kitchen chairs on the floor. I could see blood on the floor near the sink. I could see broken glass on the ground. I could see Karen on the couch lying down.
“I could see the blanket where they put Santina. The blanket was on her. She was under the blanket in the same place. I said to Karen, ‘What’s going on?’ I took the blanket off him. Santina was naked, without clothes.
“She was dressed when I left. Santina didn’t look directly at his face. One of her eyes was narrowed, like a blink, the other eye was open. There was a bruise on the left side of her forehead.
“I checked his pulse. She was hot. I tried to talk to her. She was on her knees: ‘Santina, please, Santina, please, say something, please,’ but she wasn’t responding.”
folded blanket
Mr Cawley had previously testified that he had left Santina on a folded blanket next to Ms Harrington, who was lying on a sofa when he decided to walk to Cork City to try and find his cousin who had come from Limerick.
He confirmed that he and Mrs. Harrington had been in a relationship at the time and that he and his daughter, Santina, used to stay at Mrs. Harrington’s house. “She [Santina] I get along very well with her [Ms Harrington],” he said.
He recounted how he met Mrs. Harrington’s next-door neighbor when he returned to Elderwood after 5 a.m. and the neighbor came up to him and said that he had heard Mrs. Harrington’s screams and the baby’s crying.
“The [the neighbour] said: “Karen has gone crazy and yells at your baby. Is that your baby?’” Cawley said, adding that he wasn’t alarmed at the time because he thought Santina might be crying because he needed food or a diaper change.
He said that when he entered the apartment and saw the scene there, he asked Mrs. Harrington “What’s going on with my baby?” but Mrs. Harrington ran downstairs and out of the apartment through a lower door.
He said that later, when ambulance paramedics and Gardai arrived at the scene, he saw Ms. Harrington with another woman and approached her and asked if it was Santina’s blood that was in the kitchen.
She said Ms. Harrington said the blood did not belong to Santina but was from her own foot and the woman, who was with Ms. Harrington, told her “Karen wouldn’t touch a fly.”
Department
Cross-examined by defense counsel, Brendan Grehan SC, Mr. Cawley agreed that he had been drinking that night at the apartment of Ms. Harrington’s friend, Martina Higgins, and accepted that he and Ms. Harrington had a Fight.
Initially, Mr. Cawley said he did not know why Mrs. Harrington left early, but later accepted that she had gone home angry after they had a fight when he called her “a whore and a whore” and accused of fraternizing with other men.
Mr Grehan said: “The problem started at the party when you got a call to say your cousin was coming from Limerick and you wanted to take him to Karen’s flat in Elderwood for the night.
Mr Cawley denied this and said that Mrs Harrington would have known long before her cousin was coming from Limerick and needed a place to stay, but that she had no problem with that.
Mr. Grehan told Mr. Cawley: “You said she meets blacks and Pakistanis at the casino and says ‘Hello, Hello’… Did you tell her to go back to her foreigners and call her a whore and a prostitute?
Mr. Cawley said that he did not remember saying that to Mrs. Harrington that night, but he agreed with Mr. Grehan that Mrs. Harrington did not want to be with him when he left the party around 1: 25 a.m.
Frustration
Mr. Grehan also told Mr. Cawley that he was expressing his frustration to Mrs. Higgins at having to care for Santina and had asked Mrs. Higgins to call her mother to see if she would take Santina in, since he knew he raised children.
“It was a privilege to take care of Santina and I always wanted her in my life,” said Cawley, who denied asking Higgins to call her mother and that he was frustrated that Santina was “whimpering and crying.”
“No, I didn’t want her (Mrs. Higgins’ mother) to adopt Santina,” said Cawley, who also denied saying he wanted to return Santina to her mother, his ex-wife, Bridget O’Donoghue, from whom he separated. in 2018.
Mr. Cawley accepted that at one point in the evening he challenged Mrs. Higgins’s boyfriend, Eric Okunula, to a fight, but had nothing to do with Mr. Okanula’s threat to call the guards because he was loud and not would go
He said he was offended when Mr. Okunula knocked Ms. Higgins’s drink out of her glass because he felt it was disrespectful and wondered if she would have behaved that way with a man, so he questioned his behavior.
He admitted taking off his shirt to engage Mr. Okunula in a bare-knuckle fight, but denied calling Mr. Okunula “a rat” for saying he was going to call the guards and told him not to bother as he left and left. It was with Santina.
Mr. Cawley said that earlier he had asked Ms. Higgins if they could stay in her apartment that night because Santina was asleep on the couch and he didn’t want to wake her up and thought they could both spend the night there.
He said he didn’t want to take Santina back to the Leeside Apartments where he lived because he had been drinking and he couldn’t drive and it was too far to walk with Santina, so he decided to take her to Mrs. Harrington’s apartment.
“I thought it would be easier to stay at Karen Harrington’s,” Mr. Cawley said, adding that he believed he carried Santina on his chest and in a cart back to Ms. Harrington’s apartment in the complex. The case continues.
Reference-www.irishtimes.com