Aaron Brady questioned about recording and phone activity during murder trial

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Aaron Brady pleaded not guilty to the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe and to a second charge of robbery. The proceedings were reported on 16 July 2020. Donohoe was shot during the robbery at Lordship Credit Union on 25 January 2013.

A dashcam audio recording from the scene was played in court. Asked by senior counsel Brendan Grehan about the accents on it, Brady said he could not make them out. He denied stealing a car the prosecution alleged was used in the robbery and rejected Grehan’s suggestion that a suspect’s car, in which Brady may have been a passenger, had driven past the credit union earlier that day.

Grehan said phone evidence showed that Brady’s two phones and phones belonging to two suspects were inactive for roughly two hours before and after the robbery. Brady said his phones were inactive because he was laundering diesel and he could not explain the other phones’ inactivity. He accepted that his phone became active again an hour and a quarter after the murder, when he texted his girlfriend.

Brady admitted that, after gardaí stopped him at a checkpoint the following day, he called his girlfriend twice to get her to falsely say he had been with her during the robbery and murder. He insisted he had done so to cover his claimed involvement in diesel laundering, rather than involvement in the robbery or murder. The trial was continuing.