The brother of a woman accused of keying a pensioner in the face at a Fife New Year house party claims his sister was actually the one being attacked that night.
Derek Kelly told a trial Patricia Donaldson and Kay Feeley barged into his home “like two raging dogs” before assaulting Wilma Cunniffe in his living room.
He said the three women ended up in the hallway during a struggle and Ms Donaldson fell into his front door and struck her eye on the door key.
The trial at Dunfermline Sheriff Court has previously heard Ms Donaldson say she was hit in the eye with the key, leaving her eyelid “hanging down”.
Wilma Cunniffe, 50, and her daughter Yazmin Cunniffe, 22, and Mr Kelly’s 18-year-old daughter Rachel Kelly, are alleged to have assaulted Ms Donaldson by kicking and punching her while holding a key or similar implement, to her severe injury.
The three women, and Rachel Kelly’s mother Jennifer Kelly, 38, face a second charge of assaulting Ms Donaldson’s daughter, Melissa Donaldson, by knocking her to the ground and repeatedly kicking and stamping on her head to her injury.
All four accused, who are Melissa Donaldson’s cousins and second cousins, deny the charges and both mothers have lodged notices of self-defence.
Earlier in the trial, retired nurse Patricia Donaldson, 66, said she went to the house after her daughter had suffered facial injuries, which she said had been inflicted at the house.
The trial heard the older complainer needed stitches to her eyelid following the episode in Cardenden‘s Cluny Park on January 2 2020.
‘Like raging dogs’
Joiner Mr Kelly said he answered his door to Patricia Donaldson and her sister Kay Feeley, who barged past him into his living room.
He described them as “raging like two dogs” and said Ms Donaldson punched his sister Wilma, who was sitting on the couch, while Ms Feeley pulled her hair.
He said his sister was forced to defend herself.
“As the three of them went down Tisha’s (Ms Donaldson’s) face went into the door and slid down.
“My key was inside the barrel lock of the front door and as they went down, Tisha’s face went down the door at the handle and then the key was snapped inside the door”.
He said he grabbed Ms Donaldson and Ms Feeley, before putting them outside and telling them they were “a pair of f***ing clowns” for their actions.
He said he was especially angry because he had children in the house.
He said: “Tisha was not attacked in my home – Tisha and Kay were the ones trying to do the attacking.”
Asked by prosecutor Laura McManus if the pair had actually visited to talk about the earlier alleged assault, he replied: “If you call someone coming to someone’s door and you open the door and get two, what I would call raging dogs barging past you, to me that’s not talking”.
The fiscal depute suggested Wilma had struck Ms Donaldson in the face with a key, prompting Mr Kelly to say: “I have never heard such so much cr*p”.
He added: “That’s bulls**t”.
Detective Constable Catherine Will told the trial she recalled seeing Patricia Donaldson in the aftermath with a black eye and bald patches on her head – as if having her hair pulled – and that her top had blood on it.
The trial, before Sheriff Charles Macnair, continues.
For the latest court cases across Tayside and Fife, join our Courts Facebook page.
