By Tony O’Reilly-
A family friend who was standing metres from Ian Ogle(pictured) when he was attacked yards from his east Belfast home said he saw the deceased being struck up to 50 times with a flick bat, a court heard today.
The father-of-two was beaten and stabbed close to his Cluan Place home on the evening of Sunday, January 27, 2019.
Earlier this week, stunned jurors at Belfast Crown Court were shown CCTV footage of the vicious attack on Ogle, who was set upon as he stood praying with a local pastor whom he had bumped into.
Jonathan Brown ,38, from Whinney Hill in Dundonald, and Mark Sewell 45, of Glenmount Drive in Newtownabbey, pleaded guilty to murdering Mr Ogle earlier this month and were handed life sentences.
Glenn Rainey , 37, Walter Alan Ervine (42), from Litchfield Street in Belfast, and Robert Spiers , 41, from Millars Park in Dundonald, have all denied the murder charge and are currently standing trial in Belfast.
During the third day of the non-jury trial, a number of statements were read aloud, including one from a family friend who witnessed the fatal attack.
In his statement, the witness said he was a friend of Ian Ogle’s son, Ryan Johnston, and he knew the family well.
He said that on the evening in question he was out walking his dog when he saw “Ogie” standing on the footpath at Cluan Place.
After walking over to Mr Ogle, the dog-walker said he was chatting to a man he didn’t know.
The witness said he stood chatting to Mr Ogle and the second man for a few minutes, then he noticed a group of males with their faces covered running towards them.
He said: “I was thinking something was wrong. I said to Ogie and the other man something like: ‘Yo, what is that?’
“Ogie then turned round to face up towards Templemore Avenue. All of the people running at us then got Ogie.
“It seemed like there was a wee bit of hesitation, but then one of them hit Ogie. I can’t remember where that landed, but then they all started beating him.
“By the time they started hitting him, I was about two or three metres from where they were attacking him.
“He was beaten a bit while he was standing up. He seemed to be trying to shield himself with his arms, but they beat him to the ground.”
In his statement, the witness said he also saw one of the attackers striking Mr Ogle with what he described as a flick bat.
He said: “I saw this person with the flick bat hit Ogie many, many times — at least 30, 40, 50 times to the head, face and shoulders.
“When he was on the ground, he hit him with any space to hit him.”
The witness said, at this point, he told the man with the flick bat to stop, that the attack was enough.
He said the man turned to him but didn’t stop. He then turned back to beating Mr Ogle with the item.
The statement continued: “Another one of the men attacking Ogie had a long, skinny, metal rod-type thing.
“I saw Ogie being struck with this weapon over and over.
“While they were attacking him, Ogie was crying out ‘Ah’ in pain. I didn’t hear him crying out names or anything. His cries didn’t make them stop.”
He estimated the group attack lasted around a minute before one of the gang said, “Right, come on, lads, camera,” which he thought was a reference to a camera on a peace wall.
He said one of the men spoke to him and said: “If you f*****g say anything, you’ll get the f*****g same.”
“After he said this, all but one of the gang ran off in the direction of Templemore Avenue.”
Stamp On Head
The witness said the man who stayed behind “repeatedly stamped on Ogie’s head with his foot”.
“Ogie’s head was on the ground and this male was stamping on his head with force. This man stamped on Ogie’s head at least 20 times. It looked like he was doing it as hard as he could.
“By this stage, Ogie wasn’t saying anything. The others were calling for the man stamping on Ogie to ‘come on’.
“The man kept stamping on him but, eventually, after about 30 seconds or so, he ran in the same direction as the others.”
He said he started shouting and asking Mr Ogle if he was okay, then he ran the short distance to Ian Olge’s home to raise the alarm with his son Ryan Johnston.
The witness added: “I battered the front door. Ryan stuck his head out the top window and I shouted up at him from the street: ‘Quick, quick, quick, they’ve beaten your dad.’”
He said he told Mr Johnston his dad had been beaten by a gang of masked men. “Ryan was out of his house in a minute. We both ran up to where Ogie was still lying,” he said.
The witness said he called Ian Ogle’s partner, Vera Johnston, at 9.21pm to tell her Mr Ogle had been beaten up, was in a bad way and wouldn’t wake up.
Whilst this was happening, the witness said Mr Johnston was “on the ground, calling his dad’s name, and trying to shake him to wake him up”.
He said Mr Ogle’s partner Vera and daughter Toni Johnston arrived at the scene within minutes and said they had just seen five masked men running and getting into a black car.
In his statement, the witness added that before the ambulance arrived, he saw injuries on Mr Ogle’s back and arm.
He said: “His back looked sliced. It looked like he had two stab wounds to one of his arms. There was blood everywhere, all over the street, and his face was just mangled and all red with blood.”
In another statement made by a relative of Ms Johnston, she said, as she drove along the Albertbridge Road, she saw “five men running and [she] knew something was wrong”.
She said that after turning into Cluan Place, she saw a male lying on the ground with wounds to his back.
In her statement, the woman added: “I could see his blood running into a drain and, at that point, thought he was dead.”
Mr Ogle’s son, Ryan Johnson, also gave evidence in the murder trial of his father. He admitted he had attacked a second cousin of his, Neil Ogle, not long before his father was attacked and killed.
Mr Johnson said there was “bad blood” between them, because Neil Ogle did not help him when he was attacked and beaten in the Prince Albert bar in 2017. Both Ian Ogle and his son Johnson, had been bottled during that attack over a drunken row.
He also agreed that while he was fighting with Neil Ogle, along a roadside on the Beersbridge Road in east Belfast, his father, Ian Ogle, got out of the car they had been travelling in and urged him to “get into him, son”.
The trial has caught the attention of most of Northern Ireland, and is also making headline news in other parts of the UK.