A 25-year-old man at the center of a Limerick murder trial was found in a grave on rough terrain, "face down in a crouched position, knees bent," a witness testified on Monday.
Retired Detective Sergeant Shane Curran, who investigated the May 2010 incident, gave evidence in the trial of 32-year-old Kurt Ryan of Moylish Crescent, Limerick.
According to the Irish Examiner, Ryan has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 25-year-old Lee Slattery on the grounds of Delmege House, locally referred to as the Dallies.
Ryan is on trial at the Central Criminal Court in Cork before Ms. Justice Eileen Creedon and a jury of seven women and five men.
The court heard that family members of the late Lee Slattery first alerted gardaí after discovering what appeared to be a grave covered in loose earth, sods, and brambles, the Irish Examiner has reported.
Retired Detective Sergeant Shane Curran testified that upon arrival at the cordoned-off crime scene, officers carefully excavated the site, uncovering the young man's body lying face down in the grave.
Curran said according to the Irish Examiner that that "one of the gardaí in the search of the wider area alerted him to an item concealed in a sock, close to the roof of a disused out-building."
The witness explained to the jury the distinction between automatic and semi-automatic pistols, noting that pulling the trigger once on an automatic fires multiple rounds continuously.
By contrast, a semi-automatic automatically reloads each bullet into the chamber from the magazine, but requires a separate trigger pull to fire each shot.
According to news outlets, he testified that the firearm discovered in the outbuilding was a semi-automatic in good condition, though its serial number had been drilled off and it contained no ammunition when recovered.
