Carroll Trial: John Paul Wootton cercò di “ottenere informazioni” su un altro agente

Carroll accused ‘collected information’

A man accused of the murder of Constable Stephen Carroll allegedly tried to collect information on another policeman for dissident republicans, his trial has heard.

Constable Carroll was shot dead in Craigavon in March 2009 – he was the first PSNI officer to be killed.

Two men – 20-year-old John Paul Wootton of Co Armagh and 40-year-old former Sinn Féin Councillor Brendan McConville – deny murder charges.

Wooton is also accused alone with attempting to collect or record information useful to terrorists in the months before the shooting.

On Friday the trial at Belfast Crown Court watched video evidence from two witnesses, identified only as B and E, in which they claimed Wooton tried to establish the address of a girl whose father was a serving police officer.

However both witnesses said that to them Wootton “was being brainwashed”, and one even described him as “an idiot” who often pretended to be part of something he was not.

In the first of the taped police interviews, Witness E said Wootton had asked him straight out if he was going with a girl whose father was a policeman.

He then allegedly asked for her address, which E refused, telling him the man didn’t deserve to be shot as a policeman, to which Wootton allegedly replied: “A cop is a cop”.

Witness E said that to him Wootton was always “big headed … he was always letting on he was part of something he wasn’t … he would say he had been given orders and he had certain things to do”.

He added that while Wootton implied he was affiliated to Republican Sinn Féin, or a dissident group, and would often “chant out slogans” from the groups, until his arrest, he thought he was only trying to make himself look important and big.

Until then Witness E said he had thought of Wootton as “an idiot … I thought he was being brainwashed”.

Witness B, in his taped interview, said he even told Wootton “he was being brainwashed”, and believed he was “being forced along … but did not realise he could back off”.

He too claimed Wootton had asked him if he knew of the girl’s address, but hadn’t.

Witness B said Wootton had “branched off” from his normal group of friends and began selling papers for republican Sinn Féin, but up to then he was never biased and always “saw the big picture”.

He further claimed to him Wootton seemed “ashamed” and had only got involved with others after he was approached “so many times” and that he was being “used as a scapegoat for their own ends”.

When the case resumes on Monday, evidence of gunshot residue will be given to the court.

On trial with McConville of Glenholme Avenue, Craigavon and Wootton, of Collindale in Lurgan, accused of perverting justice is Wootton’s 48-year-old mother Sharon, of the same address.