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A 43-year-old man has appeared in court after a woman was ‘slashed with a machete’ in Dungannon at the weekend.
Martin Joseph Groogan, from Gortin Crescent, Dungannon, is charged with attempted murder and possessing an offensive weapon namely a knife. The offences alleged to have occurred on Saturday in Dungannon.
A detective constable from the PSNI Public Protection Unit told Enniskillen Magistrates Court the charges could be connected.
He explained police received a dropped 999 call in which a woman could be heard stating, “What am I going to say?”
Another person not at the scene called an ambulance, and paramedics in turn contacted Groogan who was told to administer First Aid.
He was noted to be highly intoxicated and alleged foreign nationals had broken into the woman’s house and attacked her.
The injured woman was identified and police discovered her bleeding heavily from various wounds, but particularly from a severe injury to her leg.
Officers applied a tourniquet to her leg and carried out First Aid on her other wounds, including slice wounds to her stomach and both legs.
An Air Ambulance arrived and following assessment police were told the tourniquet had ultimately saved the woman’s life.
Enquiries revealed Groogan had fled the scene and taken a taxi to a house in Armagh, where another police crew observed him enter.
He was discovered hiding in the roof space and arrested.
The injured party was later spoken to in hospital and gave a verbal account that she had asked Groogan to leave her house but he refused.
“She states he just flipped and grabbed the knife and slashed her,” said the detective.
She knew she was bleeding heavily and while she lay on the floor begging him to call an ambulance, he threatened to do it again.
The detective advised the woman underwent surgery yesterday and will have to be transferred to another hospital for plastic surgery.
Meanwhile, a blood-stained machete was found in a cupboard in the woman’s home.
He claimed he was sleeping on the sofa when three black males entered the house and attacked the woman but refused to give any further details.
Due to what happened, he panicked and left the property.
He repeated this in a follow-up interview and then reverted to ‘no comment’ replies.
He did not confirm if he had called an ambulance and asked officers if the woman was sober when she spoke to police.
A defence solicitor advised there was no application for bail at this time, but Groogan has maintained his innocence and the claim that the attack was carried out by three other males.
District Judge Alana McSorley remanded him in custody to appear again at Dungannon Magistrates Court at a later date.
