A Royal Mail employee murdered during an alleged IRA robbery would have bled to death “within a matter minutes,” a court has heard.
Craigavon Crown Court also was told that Frank Kerr was shot through the neck during the post office sorting office robbery in Newry on 10 November 1994.
Giving evidence at the Diplock trial of James Seamus Fox, the former state pathologist for NI Professor Jack Crane, outlined how Mr Kerr was struck to the right shoulder, but the bullet had passed upwards before exiting close to his voice box.
Professor Crane said the bullet had lacerated the left side of Mr Kerr’s carotid artery, a wound which would have “caused his fairly rapid, but not immediate death”.
Under cross-examination from defence KC John Kearney, the pathologist said Mr Kerr (53) would have sadly died “within a matter of minutes”.
He also outlined how he had found abrasions and bruises, which were indicative of a “struggle” before he was shot in the neck, including injuries consistent with having been struck by the butt of a gun.
Fox, from the Carewamean Road in Jonesborough, is charged with the murder of Mr Kerr, robbing Royal Mail of £131,000, possessing a pistol, a revolver and ammunition with intent to endanger life and with membership of a proscribed organisation, namely the IRA.
It is the Crown case that using modern DNA tests and forensics techniques there is an “irresistible inference” that Fox was a “willing and active participant in what prosecuting KC Samuel Magee described as “a professionally-planned, high-risk raid” where gang had both inside information “and the help of others”.
Mr Magee has submitted that Fox could be linked to a blood-stained Royal Mail uniform found in the back of a Renault car, 45 minutes after the robbery and murder.
The court has heard his hairs and DNA were found in a Royal Mail cap, while blood smears from the victim were on the trousers.
The court previously was told they were subject to forensic tests at the time, but apart from the victim’s blood being found on the trousers, the results were negative.
In 2019, however, the exhibits were examined again and following the results led to charges being levied against Fox.
The trial continues.