He was giving evidence in the trial of Stephen McCullagh who is denies murdering his pregnant girlfriend
A taxi driver in the Natalie McNally murder trial has told how he picked up a fare outside a Lurgan pub and dropped of in Lisburn the night she was killed.
He was giving evidence in the trial of Stephen McCullagh, 36, of Woodland Gardens, Lisburn, who is accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend in December 2022.
She was 15 weeks pregnant when she was beaten, stabbed and strangled in her Silverwood Green home in Lurgan on the evening of Sunday, December 18, 2022. Stephen McCullagh denies murder.
During today’s trial at Belfast Crown Court the witness, a Fonacab driver, asked what he remembered about the evening of Sunday, December 18, 2022.
He recalled driving his grey Skoda Octavia along Carnegie Street and then parking up a fare outside Fa Joe’s public bar in Lurgan. Asked by Crown barrister Charles MacCreanor KC where his customer was, he replied: “I believe he came from standing by the entrance to the pub. He was alone. He got into the passenger seat. I didn’t recognise him as a regular customer.”
The fare was picked up at 10.46pm and the drop off time was at 11.13pm. The taxi driver said the only thing he recalled was that he was worried the fare would fall off the seat as he was a “big person.”
He remembered the customer had a bag with him and he put it down by his feet in the footwell. The witness said the customer asked him to take him to Lisburn and to use the Moira/Lisburn Road as the best route.
“He had said that his mother was unwell and the conversation was that everything had been left for him to sort out. He was sort of annoyed that he had to go to Lisburn to sort this out.”
He confirmed to the court that he didn’t know where the ‘end stop’ was for the fare and just followed the directions from his customer. The witness recalled making a couple of wrong turns on the journey.
He said the journey came to an end when the customer said to him that this was the address and he pulled up on the left side of the street beside a hedge and behind it was a small bungalow.
Asked to describe the hedge, the cabbie said: “I think I recall it being very high and I was unable to see the bungalow. The customer said he hoped the family had money to pay for this (fare). He left the car, went into the entrance and came back with the money.”
The driver said the passenger left his bag in the footwell and some customers do that as a sign that they were coming back with the money and then retrieve the bag.
“He came back after a couple of minutes. I would say no more than five minutes, probably.”
He recalled he was paid in cash, adding that normally a trip from Lurgan to Lisburn at that time would have been around £20. The witness said the customer retrieved his bag and went into the bungalow where he had pulled up and stopped his taxi.
Asked to describe his customer’s manner during the trip, he replied: “He was very polite but there were a couple of points when I made a wrong turn and the customer got a little anxious and irate and said: ‘You went the wrong way. It’s OK. A lot of people that make that mistake’.”
Under cross examination from defence counsel John Kearney KC, the witness confirmed he could not be accurate that the drop off time was 11.13pm.
Asked did he tell police that his customer spoke with a local Lurgan accent, the witness said what he was trying to say was that his fare did not speak with a foreign accent.
In a statement from a Foncab IT manager, he said the fare that was picked up outside Fa Joe’s had been dropped off at Woodland Gardens in Lisburn, according to the Skoda Octavia’s GPRS system.
The case resumes on Monday.
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