One-punch attack 'loud and forceful', court told

The partner of a pub landlord who was killed by a single punch has told a jury the man accused of murdering him "appeared out of nowhere".

Rebecca Mullally told Stafford Crown Court she was with Matthew O'Gara and friends at the Ricco and Loren bar in Lichfield, Staffordshire, when Billy Allison punched O'Gara suddenly in the head.

She described the attack, which broke several bones in his neck and split an artery supplying blood to the brain, as quick, loud and forceful.

Allison denies murdering O'Gara but has admitted manslaughter. The 36-year-old also admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm against another man, Adam Cooper, during the same incident, but denied doing so intentionally.

Cooper, who was part of a group at the bar with O'Gara and others, suffered a fractured eye socket, a fractured nose and damage to a dental implant, the court was told.

Allison, of Cropthorne Road in Shirley, Solihull, was not someone O'Gara's partner had seen before and she had not seen any interaction between him and O'Gara or other members of their group, she told the court.

O'Gara had his back to Allison when the punch came, she said.

She was visibly upset at times while giving evidence in the witness stand.

"I'd never see a punch like that before," she told the court. "I did think 'has that killed him?' It was hard."

She said her partner had gone to get a drink from the bar and then went to the toilet. When he came back, a song he liked was playing and he was dancing to it.

"I was stood by him, dancing in the group, and then basically he just got punched in the left side of his head.

It was audible above the noise from the speakers in the bar, she said.

"It was really fast and really quick, really loud. I heard the punch because it was really forceful."

She described how her day had begun with looking after her horse and a dog walk, before heading to The Plough in Huddlesford, where O'Gara was landlord.

There, she chatted and drank with friends sat outside, adding that her partner was in a "happy" mood having just watched his team Tottenham Hotspur beat Everton on the television that afternoon.

They had decided to go out to Lichfield in the evening and the group hired two Ubers to get there.

They started off at the Duke of York before moving on to Ricco and Loren.

The jury was shown a map of the route and shown CCTV images of the moments leading up to the attack.

Mullally described Allison as being "really tall, really broad shoulders, he was very big."

He was much larger than her partner, who she said was 5ft 7 and "medium build".

She said that after the punch, she noticed O'Gara's face turning blue and called paramedics, urging them to hurry.

People from the bar assisted him, she said, before police and ambulance crews arrived.

She said she noticed Allison remained in the corner of the dance floor but then left through a back door, and had not seen him afterwards.

Later, she described seeing Cooper outside and noticing that he too had been hurt.

"He was crying and he looked like he'd got black eyes, blood on his face," she said.

Earlier, the jury had heard how Allison, had been visiting Lichfield with a group of friends including his girlfriend Charlotte Dean and friends Ryan Bridge and Ben Cullen, and had been drinking throughout the day before the attack on the two men, who he did not know.

Footage from a courtyard at the back of the bar taken after the attack showed Cooper receiving help in a wooden shelter and Allison leaving through a gate.

The jury was told how after he left the scene, Allison swapped t-shirts with Cullen, and had tried to pull the top over his head to conceal his face from a camera.

The trial at Stafford Crown Court continues.

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