Young man with Laois address was clutching a bottle of holy water after stabbing a fisherman who later died

Crouched in the corner of his kitchen, clutching a bottle of holy water, Dean Kerrie had repeated: "He should not have come into my house.”

The teenage boy told the sergeant that he was sorry for a stabbing which ultimately caused the death of a fisherman for which Kerrie has now been found guilding of manslaughter but cleared of murder.

It was clear there had been violence at the boy’s home in Dunmore East. Garda witnesses told the Central Criminal Court retrial that when they arrived, they saw that most of the front windows had been broken from the outside in.

There was a damaged, blood-smeared chair in the hallway, with one of its legs being found in the attic, where Kerrie, who now resides St Brigid's Square, Portarlington, Co Laois,  had also hidden his mother.

“I don't know where else to put her,” he had told a 999 dispatcher.

There was blood too, with areas of staining found outside the house, on a hall wall, on the hall floor and on the chair. This blood was a match to 25-year fisherman Jack Power, who had died at the scene having suffered a 13cm knife wound to his chest, which penetrated his heart and caused "massive, catastrophic" blood loss.

In a 999 call made by Kerrie at 3.44am on the morning of July 26, 2018, he said that he was asleep in his bed, that an argument had taken place and a window had been smashed in in his house. Kerrie also said on the call that Mr Power, who he said he had known all his life, had come "in the front door at him" and tried to hit him.

Kerrie who is now aged 21, He said he had stabbed Mr Power in the chest with a kitchen knife but that he didn't mean to.

“You are not going to run away?” the dispatcher had asked him.

“No, cause it wasn't my fault, he was breaking into my own home. The kitchen knife is on the ground. I really didn't mean to do this in my own home…I'm in fear of my life with these people coming back to my door,” Kerrie had replied.

“I'm in fear for my life in the house….I'm actually so in fear of my life right now,” he later added.

Kerrie had also told Sergeant Pat Kenny that: “Jack was in the hall and grabbed my mother. He started punching and swinging kicks. I grabbed a knife that was next to bed. Stabbed him with it [sic].”

During his first trial at the Central Criminal Court, at which the jury were unable to reach a verdict, Kerrie was asked how he ended up stabbing Jack Power and had told prosecution counsel: “He tried to kick the knife out of my hand. I went to move out of the way at the same time and then when he came in on top of me he lost his footing."

He was asked by counsel if he was telling the jury that this was an accidental stabbing. "Yes it was, I did not mean this," said Mr Kerrie.

Kerrie did not give evidence at his second trial, held less than five months after the first, a fact that trial judge Mr Justice Paul McDermott told the jury they could not hold against him.

In his closing speech to the jury, Kerrie’s defence counsel Ciaran O'Loughlin SC told them that "self-defence is what this case is about".

He said that Jack Power had “broke in the door” of the Kerrie household and entered as a trespasser. Counsel reminded them that it was not an offence for someone to use reasonable force against a trespasser who entered a house for the purpose of committing a criminal act.

However Christopher Lee, Mr Power’s best friend and an eye witness to the incident, had denied that Jack forcibly pushed in the door of the house, telling the court:  "These lies he [Kerrie] has to make up to get away with it".

He told the jury that Mr Kerrie had "deliberately killed" Mr Power. "I seen [sic] what happened; his only way out of it is to tell lies,” Mr Lee said.

A Fishing Village

Jack Power grew up in Dunmore East, where he was a fisherman like his father before him,  and lived in the family home with his parents and younger brother. Dean Kerrie was 17 at the time and had also grown up in Dunmore East, where he lived with his mother Ann Fitzgerald in the Shanakiel housing estate.

 On the night of July 25,  Jack had been socialising in the "Butcher Power's" pub, where he remained until "the small hours of the morning". He left the pub around 3am and was intoxicated at the time. 

When Jack went out to his car that night, he found the wing mirror damaged and believed this had been carried out maliciously. “In his own mind,” prosecution counsel Michael Delaney SC told the jury, Jack believed Dean Kerrie was the culprit. Jack got into his car and drove from Circular Road to the top of Dunmore East, where he parked in an estate adjacent to Shanakiel. There he met his two friends Christopher Lee and Cormac Murphy and told them that he believed Kerrie was responsible for the damage to his car.

Jack picked up a rock from a flower bed and then ran around a corner toward the Kerrie home.

Best Friends

Christopher Lee told the jury that he and Jack were best friends, having started primary school together at the same time.

"When I ran into him at first he was laughing but I know he was giving out about his car being broke up [sic]," Mr Lee said about those early hours of the morning. “When he went left I heard glass breaking," he said, adding that he didn't know at the time what had caused the glass to break.

When the witness got around the corner he saw Jack going into the garden of the Kerrie house. "I saw Dean Kerrie's mother coming towards Jack in the garden and Jack pushed her back and she fell over," Mr Lee said.

The witness said he saw Dean in the garden, that he 'came out' towards Jack, turned around and went into the house. "Jack went into the house after him," he added.

Mr Lee told the jury that he was "close enough to the front door" of the house at that moment and could have been standing on the doorstep. 

The witness said he saw Jack and Dean in the middle bedroom through the window. "I saw pushing in the bedroom, Jack pushing Dean," he continued. The witness said he thought Dean had left the bedroom first followed by Jack and that they went into the hallway. 

Mr Lee said he then moved to the front door, which was opened, and had a view into the hallway.

"There was a bit of pushing in the hallway. Jack was only a couple of feet away from me. I saw Dean coming from the kitchen with a knife in his hand. Jack was walking out of the house facing me," he continued. 

Asked if anything was said when Dean came into the hall, Mr Lee said the accused had shouted something about the house at Jack.

"Jack was nearly at the front door. Jack turned around and I noticed Dean moving fast and saw a knife in his hand. I saw Dean push his hand towards Jack's chest. Jack was only after turning around and this happened straight away," he said.

Mr Lee said that when Jack turned around towards him he was holding his chest. "I was standing at the door. I was shouting at Jack, I knew what was after happening. I was in shock. I couldn't believe it," he said.

Mr Lee testified that Jack just walked past him and that the colour was gone from his face.

"I just remember Jack lying on the road outside the house. Jack wasn't responding and I didn't have a phone on me," he said.

After calling for an ambulance from his father’s house nearby, Mr Lee said he picked up a golf club and returned to the Kerrie home.  "I remember breaking the windows with the golf club. I broke the middle window first," he said. Asked why he broke the windows, Mr Lee said he was in shock after what he had seen.

However, Dean Kerrie’s friend Dylan Jones told a different story. On that night he was staying at Mr Kerrie's home, something he did often that summer. He said he fell asleep in Mr Kerrie's room while watching ‘America's Got Talent’ and sometime later awoke to people outside shouting: "You're dead, you're dead."

He heard windows being smashed and told Mr O'Loughlin that Jack Power entered through the front door and “appeared to be drunk, kind of stumbling”.

"He approached and pushed me against the wall and went into the bedroom and grabbed Dean," Mr Jones said.

He recalled seeing Mr Power "choking" Mr Kerrie and saying: "I'm going to kill you."

Dean, he said, was screaming, "please get off me" and Mr Jones said he had told Mr Power: "Please get off him, he is only a child, leave him alone."

He added: "I thought he was going to kill Dean."

Mr Kerrie's mother was in the hallway next to the bedroom door when Mr Power grabbed her by the hair and "swung her side to side", Mr Jones said.

At this point, he said Mr Power stumbled backwards and then into the hallway and out the front door. Mr Jones said he didn't see a knife and didn't see Mr Power being stabbed but he accepted that it must have happened just before Mr Power stumbled backwards.

He recalled Dean Kerrie saying: "I think I stabbed him, I need to call the guards." Kerrie was "crying, in hysterics," he said.

He said he knew there were more people outside because he could hear them so he ran to the front door to hold it closed. He said people were trying to push in through the door and were again shouting "you're dead, you're dead".

Mr Jones added: "I thought that night was going to be my last." He could hear windows being smashed around the house and said he and Dean had tried to put Ms Fitzgerald in the attic "because we feared for her life". 

Mr Jones told prosecution counsel that Dean had not damaged Mr Power's car earlier that night. When Mr Delaney put it to him that his account of what happened was "completely untrue", Mr Jones responded: "This account is the truth and nothing but the truth. You are trying to make conspiracies but I'm telling the whole truth."

Mr Delaney suggested that Jack Power was about to leave the house when Kerrie came from the kitchen with a knife and called Mr Power back. Mr Jones responded: "That's the biggest conspiracy, complete lies, what I said is the truth."

Mr Delaney said that Mr Power then turned around when Kerrie shouted before Kerrie stabbed him. "False," the witness had replied.

Other Evidence

Retired Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis gave evidence to the trial that Jack Power had 187 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood in his system at the time of his post mortem examination. There had been evidence of recent cocaine use but this was not of a high level.

Dr Curtis said that Mr Power's blood-alcohol level would result in "moderate intoxication" in the average person. In cross-examination, he agreed with Mr O'Loughlin that Mr Power's intoxication level could lead to possible incoordination of movement.

The jury also heard that a doctor called to examine Mr Kerrie when he was brought to a local garda station found only minor injuries. The accused's mother was also examined in the garda station and she was found to have no injuries.

During a search of the Kerrie home, gardai recovered a black and white-handled Swiss Line knife on a mat in the hallway. Swabs were taken from the blade and handle but no blood was found.

Resting on the draining board of the kitchen however, was another knife. This large, black handled knife was heavily stained with what was later determined to be Jack Power’s blood.

 During his 999 call, Kerrie had been asked about the knife and replied that it was on the floor in his hall. He was asked several times not to touch the knife and agreed that he wouldn't.

“Dean, where is the knife?” the dispatcher had asked him. “It's on the ground, here in front of me,” Kerrie replied.

“Leave it where it is and don't touch it. The guards have to take it,” the dispatcher had directed.

“Yeah, OK,” Kerrie had replied.

Closing Moments

In his closing address to the jury, Mr O'Loughlin reminded them that an "enraged" Mr Power was 6'4" tall, while Mr Kerrie was 5'7". He said his client had picked up a knife to try and "ward off" the bigger man but it "unfortunately" went through soft tissue after a scuffle, resulting in "tragedy".

The prosecution had submitted that if a person stabs another in the chest with a large kitchen knife, at the very least they intend to cause serious injury to that person and on that basis they were inviting the jury to conclude that Dean Kerrie presumed to kill or cause serious injury to Jack Power.

Mr Justice McDermott had told the jury of seven women and four men that an intention to kill or cause serious harm does not necessarily mean a "premeditated crime" and that this intention could be formed "moments" or "in an instant" before such an incident.

The judge reminded the jurors that the evidence in the trial had come from a number of people with different recollections, presentations and accounts as to what happened. He told the jury that the weight to be attached to any evidence or whether they consider a witness to be credible was a matter solely for them.

Mr Justice Paul McDermott that there were three verdicts available. He told them to first consider whether Kerrie honestly believed that Mr Power had entered his home as a trespasser intending to commit a criminal act. Secondly he told them to consider whether Kerrie's use of force was necessary to protect himself or others from Mr Power or to prevent a criminal act.

The judge added:  "If you find that in the circumstances faced by him, that he applied such force as was objectively reasonable in the circumstances, then he has acted in a lawful manner and is entitled to an acquittal."

If Kerrie had used excessive force but had an honest belief that the force he used was necessary then he is not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, the judge said. He added: "If you find that the accused knew the force used was excessive then you must find him guilty of murder."

The jury rejected the contention that Kerrie had no intent to kill or cause serious harm to Mr Power while using reasonable force and was entitled to an acquittal.

Jury reaches verdict in murder retrial of man with Laois address

They also rejected the contention that he knew he was using excessive force and was guilty of murder, instead taking just under six hours over two days of deliberations to find Kerrie guilty of manslaughter.