Martin O’Donovan died aged 47 following the incident outside his sister’s home in Woolton, Liverpool in April. Stephen Bates, of Mossley Hill, has now appeared before Liverpool Crown Court
A bloke threw back Jägerbombs with his girlfriend’s brother before mowing him down and killing him on the evening the pair first met, a court was told. Martin O’Donovan died at the age of 47 following the tragedy outside his sister’s home in Woolton, Liverpool in April this year, which occurred during their mother’s 70th birthday celebration.
Stephen Bates appeared before Liverpool Crown Court on Tuesday (October 21) charged with his murder. Despite having only been introduced earlier that same day, he allegedly proceeded to make a string of death threats against his victim following a booze-fuelled scuffle, the hearing was told.
The court heard the 42-year-old subsequently drove back to the location in his Ford Fiesta and “deliberately drove straight at him”, leaving him pinned beneath the vehicle with severe head trauma, reports the Liverpool Echo.
He later told police officers: “I know what I’ve done, I’ve f***** up.” Jurors yesterday viewed footage of a pre-recorded statement which Susanne Lewzey, Bates’ girlfriend and Mr O’Donovan’s sister, provided to investigators the following day.
In the video, she described the celebration: “Everything was good. Everyone was having a good time. Me and Stephen, my boyfriend, my brother and my mum started having a few drinks at about 3 o’clock, a couple of hours before everyone else came.
“It was good. No issues. It was the first time my brother and my boyfriend had met. He doesn’t come home that much. He lives in Birmingham. They hit it off straight away, it was all good.
“They were just having a laugh, downing shots, getting a little bit more drunk as time went on. Everyone was laughing about how they had a bit of a bromance. They were all made up with each other. Typical party, everything was fine.
“As the night went on, I noticed Stephen was getting a bit too drunk. I’ve never seen him that drunk. I’ve been with him 19 months. If we go out, we have two or three. I’ve never seen him bladdered or heavily drunk before, but he was. He was very drunk.
“I thought, he’s starting to get on people’s nerves. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I said, ‘come and sit in the living room, have a sit down for 10 minutes’. I said ‘nobody’s complaining, but you’ve had a lot to drink babe, you need to have a little chill and have some water for a bit’.
“He said, ‘do you want me to go home then, I’m a k***head?’. He started to get in a mood. That snowballed then. Not in a massive way at first. I said, I don’t want you to go home, there’s no problem. You’ve had a lot to drink. It’s my mum’s birthday party and I want to enjoy it. You can either have a sit down and chill or I’ll order you a taxi. He said ‘I’ll go, I’m walking’.
“I ordered him an Uber, and it turned up in a few minutes. He was at his car door, ‘get out the way, I’m driving’. This went on for five, 10 minutes. I was trying to calm him down. I was saying ‘I love you, you’re going to kill yourself or someone else, you’re not getting in this car, end of’.
“I was dead calm. I said, you’re not getting in the car. He said, ‘get out my f***ing face right now’. I went right, ok, gave him his keys then ran in and said ‘Martin, I can’t stop him from getting in that car, please go out, he’s going to kill himself’.
“They were just sitting there talking, calm. Everything was calm. I don’t know how long later it was, they came together into the hall, the front door, my brother first then Stephen.
“I don’t know what got said. It went from being calm to them fighting. They were literally just battering each other in the garden. I was like, what the hell? I didn’t understand what had happened.”
Ms Lewzey recalled that the two men were “bashing against her car” and “rolling around the front garden”, adding: “They were just going at it. I managed to separate them. I was saying, ‘stop it, stop it, just stop’. Other people had hold of my brother. Stephen was still antagonising, ‘look at you, you’re a f****** p****, you’re a c***, you’re all c****. I was like, ‘pack it in’.
“Then he’s again [said], ‘I’m getting my car, no one’s f****** telling me’. He was like, ‘this is not gonna be the same again after this, all your family are c****’. Then he was trying to get back in his car, and this conversation has started again.”
Ms Lewzey said that her sister Natalie O’Donovan then volunteered to chauffeur Bates home in his own vehicle, to which he agreed. She said: “I thought, well, at least that’s that and he’s home. I went back inside. Everything was kind of alright. I was just fuming that they’d been fighting. It was my mum’s birthday. I’m livid. This was supposed to be a nice party.
“My brother came up and said, ‘I’m so sorry we ended up fighting, but I can’t be having him threatening my sister, he’s out of order’. I was like, ‘I’m not even mad at you, I appreciate what you’ve done, but it’s just not on, I don’t want that here’. He was like, ‘I love you and I’ll protect you’. I said there won’t be an issue because he’s not coming back, I don’t want to speak to him ever again. That was that, I thought.”
Ms Lewzey then received a telephone call from Ms O’Donovan during which she discovered that Bates had instructed her to drive to Barndale Road, the street adjacent to his residence, before taking control of the wheel and speeding off without her. She added: “She said, ‘oh my god, he’s just got in the car and sped off’. I was like, you are kidding. I’m fuming.
“I opened my front door and my brother was sitting on the wall. I was just about to say to him, ‘Martin, he’s got in his car’. I literally just opened it, and his car appeared. His car just appeared. It went right into the wall.
“Within a split second, my brother had jumped up. He basically jumped off the wall, because he’d seen the car, and ran to dodge the car. He went to hit him, stopped, turned and just ran him straight full over, and I mean, like full blast. I went ballistic. I could see my brother face down under his car. He was still revving it, trying to carry on. I thought, he’s going to run over him again with the back wheels.
“I was just banging on the driver’s window like, ‘stop, stop’. He was just like, nothing. I was terrified. I opened the driver’s door and started hitting him, saying ‘stop, stop, he’s under the car’. I grabbed the keys out of the ignition. He just looked at me and got out the car. I don’t know where he went. I never seen him again.”
One gentleman departed the public gallery, where relatives of Mr O’Donovan could be observed dabbing away tears with tissues, as Ms Lewzey went on to say in the recording: “From that point, all I could see was my brother face down under the car. I rang an ambulance straight away. My cousins and uncles came out and lifted the car. He was in a terrible state. The blood was everywhere.
“There was loads of commotion in the street. Everyone was hysterical. Then the paramedics came. There was loads of police. I could just tell straight away that he was almost dead, basically. They were working on him for ages.”
Bates, of Mossley Hill, Liverpool, denies the charge of murder, having previously pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. The trial continues.
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