A man has gone on trial accused of murdering his aunt by deliberately driving over her in a JCB tractor in the yard outside her farmhouse in Galway.
Michael Scott, of Gortanumera in Portumna, Co Galway, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 76-year-old Chrissie Treacy on the 27th of April 2018.
Chrissie Treacy spent her whole life in the family home at Derryhiney in Portumna, surrounded by 120 acres of what was described as “the finest agricultural land.”
In 2009, after her brother Willy died without leaving a will behind him, half the land at Derryhiney was left to Chrissie, while the rest went to her nephew, Michael Scott.
Mr Scott, who was described as “an accomplished, skilled and hardworking farmer,” tended to his own land and also farmed Chrissie’s through a lease arrangement.
In his opening address, the prosecuting barrister, Dean Kelly SC, told the jurors it would be alleged that Mr Scott “wilfully and callously” ran over his aunt following a deterioration in their relationship as a result of a dispute over the land.
Mr Kelly claimed the accused felt he had been “wronged” and did it with a powerful sense of “anger and resentment” in response to the changing position of the ownership of the land they shared.
Mr Scott denies the charge.
