Stephen Bates is on trial for the murder of Martin O’Donovan and allegedly made chilling threats to the 47-year-old moments before he was killed while attending his mum’s 70th birthday party
A “drunk” man who allegedly murdered his girlfriend’s brother at a family birthday party shouted “you’re gonna get it” moments before running him over and killing him, a court has heard.
Stephen Bates, who was “swaying” and “visibly drunk”, attended his girlfriend Susanne Lewzey’s home on the evening of April 18 for her mum’s 70th birthday party. It was the first time he had met Martin O’Donovan, who he initially took a shine to before the pair were involved in a drunken punch-up.
Bates, 42, is alleged to have issued threats to kill the 47-year-old before he was driven home and appeared to have “calmed down”.
But a short while later he returned to the scene in his Ford Fiesta and “deliberately” drove straight into Mr O’Donovan, Liverpool Crown Court heard, reports Liverpool Echo.
The jury was told the defendant had downed a cocktail of Jagerbombs, Stella Artois, Red Bull and vodka at the party in Woolton, Liverpool. One of Mr O’Donovan’s sisters, Natalie O’Donovan, gave evidence on Wednesday and admitted Bates has been “drinking for hours”.
While she admitted “everyone was having a nice night”, Ms O’Donovan said she began to “feel uncomfortable” with Bates’ behaviour around her teenage children, which led to her sister taking her boyfriend into the living room because it “got too much”. Moments later, Bates and Mr O’Donovan were “on the floor, fighting”.
The witness said: “I ran out. Stephen was on top of my brother. I put my arm in between Stephen and him and tried to pull Stephen off. I was shouting, ‘get him off’. They rolled over, and Martin was on top then. It was a little chaotic, people running out of the house.”
With the two men having been separated, Ms O’Donovan said of Bates: “He was refusing to go home. ‘You can f*** off’. I think he was shouting threats to Martin. ‘You f***ing p***y’. Those were his words. ‘You’re gonna get it’. I remember him laughing.”
Ms O’Donovan, who was not drinking at the party, agreed to take Bates home as he was “trying to get into his car” despite being heavily intoxicated. “As soon as he got in the car, literally for the whole car journey, all he done was threaten to kill my brother,” the witness said. ‘I’m gonna kill your brother, do you think he’s gonna get away with that, punching me?’.
“I said, ‘Stephen, you’ve caused the whole thing, it’s been a drunken fight, you need to go home and get some rest’. His words were, ‘I’m gonna pay someone to come and get your brother’.”
The defendant was driven home in his own Ford Fiesta but having arrived in the area where Bates lived with his mum, things escalated quickly. “This is where I feel so guilty,” Ms O’Donovan said. “I thought, he’s outside his mum’s. I calmed him down, to an extent. He looked like he was in thought. He wasn’t ranting as much.
“He was in the passenger seat still. I was stood outside. He’d obviously heard I’m on the phone and the taxi’s coming. I just seen his arm come across the passenger seat and shut the door. I’d say, within 60 seconds, he’d sped off at high speed. He was gone, and I mean gone.”
She added: “It was like he’d flown to my sister’s house. She said the taxi’s due in three minutes. Before my taxi got there, I just heard, I’ll never forget the scream that come out of my sister’s mouth. Then the phone went off.
“Obviously, all my family were there. I was saying to the taxi driver, ‘please can you hurry up, something’s happened’. It maybe took approximately 10 minutes, tops. It could have been quicker. I just ran out the taxi, and there’s Stephen, stood to the right of me on his phone. I just looked at him. In that instant, I realised. I looked straight forward. My brother was just lay, basically gargling blood out his mouth, with Stephen’s car, I think, to the left of Martin.”
Mr O’Donovan was left trapped beneath the chassis, with his uncles and cousins having worked together in order to lift the vehicle up and free their relative. However, he subsequently died in hospital after suffering serious head injuries during the incident.
“Martin was in the middle of the road,” his sister recalled. “You could see, he had blood everywhere. I knew straight away. I knew as soon as I seen him with the blood and everything.
“I just remember running over to Stephen. I was like, ‘what have you done?’. All I remember is the police taking Stephen and putting him in the back of the car. It was so long, when the ambulance then turned up, so long that they worked on Martin, so long. Martin was just a very calm person who didn’t want to get involved in people’s business. He came for my mum’s birthday party.”
Of the car journey, Ms O’Donovan added: “One of the threats was, he was gonna pay someone to kill him. He just kept calling him a p***y. ‘Does he think he’s gonna get away with that?’.
“I didn’t know this man very well. What I get from him is, he thinks he’s Mr Good Looking and Hard. The only thing I can take away from it is, he’s felt belittled. From the minute I got in the car to the minute I got out, he was just constantly threatening. I felt a bit intimidated too. If I don’t give him this key, he might kick off.”
Bates denies the count of murder, having pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. The trial continues.