Erik Okunala at Cork Court today. He told the court Michael Cawley was lifting up 10kg lifting weights and wanted to fight but later apologised for this. Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Cork Courts

WARNING: Readers may find the following content distressing.

A witness in the Santina Cawley murder trial said the two-year-old’s dad screamed in the early hours of a hot July morning: “Karen has smothered my child.” 

38-year-old Karen Harrington of Lakelands Crescent, Mahon, Cork, denies the murder of Santina Cawley at Elderwood Park, Boreenamanna Road, Cork, on July 5, 2019.

The father of two-year-old Santina Cawley broke down in tears in the witness box as he was asked to look at CCTV of himself and his daughter in a supermarket on the day before her death. Michael Cawley was being cross-examined by Brendan Grehan senior counsel for Mr Cawley’s then-partner, Karen Harrington.

Commenting on the moment he found his daughter in the room with Karen Harrington in the early hours of that morning, he said it was “the shock of my life – finding my daughter was a terrible shock.” Mr Grehan asked Mr Cawley how Karen Harrington got on with Santina. He said: “Karen got on very good with Santina.” 

Mr Grehan asked: “She doted on her – she was very fond of her?” Mr Cawley replied: “Yes. Santina got on with everyone. When she was in a ward in hospital, everyone loved her – all the nurses, everyone – and she loved them. She was very friendly.” 

Mr Grehan said: “You could not imagine Karen doing anything to Santina?” Agreeing, Mr Cawley said: “I left my daughter with someone I thought I could trust. I left her with Karen a few times and there was never a problem.

“I could never say anything bad about Karen – she got on with Santina. Santina would have been getting on with her… I trusted Karen with Santina. I did not think Karen would hurt my daughter. I did not think she would do anything to my daughter.” 

Mr Grehan asked Mr Cawley if he was still denying that he called Karen names in the early hours of the morning, causing her to leave the apartment and go back to her own. Mr Grehan said Mr Cawley had accused her of having affairs with foreigners. The witness said: “I cannot recall calling her the names you said yesterday.” 

Mr Grehan said the witness left his daughter with Karen Harrington and went into town and looked for his cousin from Limerick for about two hours around four o’clock in the morning and never found his cousin. Mr Grehan asked if he had been arguing with Karen, and Mr Cawley replied that he did not but asked her to mind Santina.

Mr Cawley said that afterwards when he thought about Karen leaving the apartment where they had been drinking, he thought that maybe she had gone home to smoke cannabis.

He said he returned from town at about 5am and that Karen’s neighbour Dylan came out and asked: “Is that your baby in there? Karen is screaming and roaring at your baby. I did tell him it was my baby inside there.

“I went to her apartment and I seen chairs on the floor and blood on the floor. Santina’s buggy was turned on the floor, glass broken on the floor. I was trying to get her to call an ambulance, call the guards - what is going on - and she was just running away as I was speaking,” Mr Cawley said.

Mr Grehan reminded Mr Cawley that he said in his statement to gardaí: “I think my baby is dead.” Mr Cawley had been in Karen Harrington’s friend’s apartment that night drinking with the friend, Martina Higgins. Ms Higgins’ partner Eric Okunala was there too but he was not drinking.

Mr Okunala testified about his memories of the night. He said when Michael (Mike) Cawley got a call from his Limerick cousin about being in Cork, Karen got upset. Mr Okunala said: “She was screaming… She did not want this person to come around. They were just giving out to each other. She was very upset, crying very loud.

“Mike got very frustrated. Maybe he thought she was gone for good. He said he was going to get rid of the child – the child was crying. The way he held the child I did not like it… I decided he should leave the child here. I took the child from him.” 

Mr Okunala said Mike Cawley was lifting up 10kg lifting weights and wanted to fight but later apologised for this. The witness rang the gardaí, and Mr Cawley left with Santina. The guards came and left. Mr Cawley returned looking for his phone but could not find it.

Much later he said Mike Cawley came back again. “He was screaming, ‘Someone is after smothering my child. Karen has smothered my child'.’"Mr Grehan said that because Santina had a broken femur she did not walk. “She did what some people call a bum-shuffle – she was dragging her legs,” Mr Grehan said.

Mr Okunala said Mr Cawley told him he could not cope and he had to “get rid of the child” so that he could move on with his life. He later grabbed Santina to go, the witness said. Mr Okunala thought the child should have been left with him and his partner, Martina, for the night.

Martina Higgins testified that she and Karen Harrington were friends from the age of 12. She said that on the evening before the events at the centre of the case she and the defendant drank together and smoked cannabis down in the Marina.

Ms Higgins said Mr Cawley called the defendant names, and that Karen got up and walked out to go home to her own apartment.

“Karen got annoyed. She got up and walked out. Karen said something in the lines of ‘f*** you.’ He said, ‘Take Santina with you.’ She said, ‘No, she is your child.’ She said something like, ‘You are getting “Carer’s”. He was loud from when he came in,” Ms Higgins said.

The witness said she woke up later to hear Michael Cawley sounding frightened and shouting: “Santina, Santina. Karen killed my child – something on the lines of that,” Ms Higgins said.

The trial of Karen Harrington will not resume until Tuesday, May 3, before Mr Justice Michael McGrath and the seven men and five women of the jury at the Central Criminal Court in Cork.

Read MoreToddler's father found her naked under blanket in blood-stained room, Cork trial hears

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