Lunney describes terrifying ordeal in court
Quinn Industrial Holdings director Kevin Lunney feared that nobody would come to help as he dragged himself along a country road, shivering from the cold, with a broken leg, knife wounds to his chest, and blood dripping from his face, the Special Criminal Court has heard.
Mr Lunney (52) had been stripped to his boxer shorts before his attackers abandoned him on the side of a dark, country road in the Cornafean area at about 9pm on a September night.
Giving evidence at the trial of four men accused of falsely imprisoning him and causing him serious harm, Mr Lunney said he dragged himself using just his left arm and left leg to a larger road, hoping a passerby would help. From there he saw a light in the distance, which he tried to crawl towards. He said: "I was exhausted. I could sense the blood running down my chest and I was conscious my face was bleeding. My left arm and left leg were all I could use to push myself along but I decided to push myself towards that window and kept doing that for, I don't know, a number of minutes."
He said he stopped a couple of times, exhausted, before pushing on again. "I was getting fearful that I wouldn't get there and nobody would come," he said.
When a tractor driver finally stopped and helped him, Mr Lunney said he was "violently shaking and shivering". Someone else who stopped put a pair of pyjamas over him and when gardaí arrived they used various things to cover him.
An unnamed man referred to as YZ (40), Alan O’Brien (40), of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3; Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3 and Luke O’Reilly (67), with an address at Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan, have all pleaded not guilty to false imprisonment and intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Lunney at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan, on September 17, 2019. The first accused cannot be named by order of the court as he is due to face trial on other, unrelated matters.
Opening the trial earlier this week Sean Guerin SC said Mr Lunney was "bundled" into the boot of a car close to his home in Co Fermanagh on the evening of September 17. He was driven to a trailer where his attackers told him to resign from Quinn Industrial Holdings and threatened to kill him. They broke his leg with a blunt object and struck him about 20 times before one of his attackers used a Stanley blade to "score" his chest.
The trial continues this afternoon.
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