Woman retracts statement and claims garda threatened to take her child

on 11/07/2012 18:26:37

The murder trial of a Dublin man has heard that he arrived at a relative's house with a gun minutes after Aidan Byrne was shot 10 times in a car off the North Circular Road.

However, witness Stacey Douglas has now retracted her statement implicating Jonathan Douglas of O'Devaney Gardens, who denies the killing at Drumalee Avenue, on February 20, 2010.

In a statement, Stacey Douglas told gardai she was settling down to watch a film with her boyfriend when her step uncle started hammering at the door of her house.

She said when she let him in Jonathan Douglas produced a gun from his jeans and told her he had been offered money and had shot someone in the nearby cattle market.

She said he was hyperactive, wax-faced and shaking.

However today on the stand, the mother-of-one retracted her statement as "wrong".

She said she was afraid when she made it because gardaí had roared and shouted her, threatened to take her child away and had said she could go home when she told them what they wanted to hear.

The 23-year-old denies being under pressure or in fear.