A 37-year-old man has gone on trial charged with the murder of his partner in Co Meath almost three years ago.
Daniel Blanaru from Rathmore, Athboy in Co Meath has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 26-year-old Larisa Serban at the home they shared with their young children, in August 2022.
Prosecuting counsel Eilis Brennan told the jurors Mr Blanaru and Ms Serban were both from Romania but had been living in Ireland for a number of years.
She said they would hear evidence that the relationship between them was turbulent and that Mr Blanaru was jealous and controlling. Ms Brennan said they would hear about an incident less than two weeks before Ms Serban's death in which there was some violence and Ms Serban had called the emergency services.
She said Ms Serban’s brother had been in the house on the night of 11 August 2022 and left in the early hours of the morning. The prosecution case is that after her brother left, there was an altercation between Ms Serban and Mr Blanaru, and that he stabbed her, leading to her death.
Ms Brennan told the jury CCTV footage would show that Mr Blanaru left the house at around 3.14am and travelled to Drogheda where his sister lived with her partner. All three then travelled in a car heading north in the direction of Belfast.
They stopped at a petrol station and calls were made from Mr Blanaru’s sister’s phone to their brother, asking him to check on Ms Serban.
Ms Serban’s body was found by Mr Blanaru’s brother and his wife lying on the floor between a bedroom and the hallway.
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The court heard she had a stab wound to her chest which damaged her heart, lung and aorta and a stab wound to her arm which had caused a bone in her arm to fracture.
She also had defensive injuries on her hands and arms.
By the time paramedics arrived, the court heard rigor mortis had set in and Ms Serban could not be resuscitated.
The court heard the car Mr Blanaru was in turned back and his sister and brother-in-law told him to go to the garda station in Drogheda, where he presented himself at 6am.
In garda interviews, Ms Brennan said Mr Blanaru gave confusing, garbled, self-serving and evasive accounts of what had happened.
He claimed there was a fracas in the house while Ms Serban, her brother and another man were there, during which Ms Serban said "Ow". He later claimed Ms Serban had come at him with a knife which somehow went into her.
Ms Brennan told the jurors it was a matter for them what they would make of the interviews. She said they would hear pathology evidence and forensic evidence linking Mr Blanaru with some blood at the scene.
She said it was the prosecution case that Mr Blanaru intended to kill or cause serious injury to Ms Serban and that he murdered her.
The trial is expected to last eight weeks and an expanded panel of 15 jurors has been sworn in to hear it.
