WOBURN — Mark Kerrigan had been drinking Scotch and could be heard screaming in the background, cursing his elderly father, who lay supine on their kitchen floor, his pulse halted and his face turning blue, prosecutors say.
“Are they fighting in the background?’’ a police dispatcher asked Brenda Kerrigan in January 2010, during the 911 call she made while her husband, Dan, appeared to be experiencing a heart attack at their home in Stoneham.
“Oh, yes,’’ she responded.
In the opening statements of a Middlesex Superior Court trial yesterday about whether Mark Kerrigan caused his father’s death, prosecutors said he “pushed and shoved’’ the 70-year-old and was “drunk, angry, abusive, argumentative, and physically violent toward his father.’’
“The final act which triggered the death of Daniel Kerrigan was when this defendant grabbed his father around the neck with such force that he fractured cartilage in the left side of his neck and shoved him to the kitchen floor,’’ said Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Keeley, as she laid out the case for charges of involuntary manslaughter and assault and battery against Mark Kerrigan.
Lawyers representing Kerrigan, who has been supported by his family in fighting the charges, argued that he loved his father, who was a “very sick man’’ with high blood pressure, diabetes, and such an advanced state of coronary artery disease that three major arteries were more than 85 percent closed.
“This is a case of science, medicine, and fact,’’ said Kerrigan’s lawyer, Janice Bassil in her opening statement. “It’s not about guesses, assumptions, and exaggerations.’’
She added: “They want someone to blame. Sometimes things just happen.’’
Bassil said the two were grappling with each other and denied that the defendant, now 46 years old, attacked his father. She said it looked to Kerrigan’s mother as if the two were in a bear hug.
“She saw her husband fall like a feather, collapse,’’ Bassil said. “She didn’t see her son throw her husband to the ground.’’
It was not clear yesterday whether Mark Kerrigan’s famous sister, former Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, would be called to testify in the case. Kerrigan, who won a bronze medal at the 1992 Winter Olympics and a silver at the 1994 Games, sat beside her mother throughout the proceedings.
She was not at the house when her father collapsed. But in March, her name appeared on a joint witness list filed by prosecutors and defense lawyers for Mark Kerrigan. The list did not specify which side plans to call the figure skater as a witness, but she has joined her family in publicly defending her brother.
In a break during the trial yesterday, Kerrigan said she did not expect to take the stand. “No one asked me to testify,’’ she said.
Prosecutors said they did not plan to call her or her mother as witnesses; defense lawyers declined to disclose who they would call to testify.
Prosecutors yesterday called Douglas Meahl, a longtime next-door neighbor of the Kerrigans; Jean Bergeron, Daniel Kerrigan’s sister, who had served him dinner the night he died; David Eastman, an emergency medical technician, and Joseph Amello, a paramedic, both with the Stoneham Fire Department; and Officer Jonathan Mahoney of the Stoneham Police Department.
Meahl testified that Daniel Kerrigan had slowed in recent years and that he could tell his neighbor wasn’t well.
Bergeron said she suggested her brother see his doctor because he appeared to be ill. “He didn’t go as often as he should have,’’ she said.
She added: “He said that night his neck was stiff. It was unusual for him to complain.’’
Neither Eastman nor Amello said they saw signs of a struggle when they arrived.
But Mahoney, who was the first officer to respond, said Brenda Kerrigan told him “her son and husband had been fighting.’’
Mahoney said Kerrigan was “extremely uncooperative’’ and “using offensive, vulgar language.’’
Mahoney said Kerrigan told him “that he grabbed [his father] by the neck, and that he fell to the floor and was faking it.’’
Daniel Kerrigan was pronounced dead about an hour after he was taken to Winchester Hospital.
Yesterday, Brenda and Nancy Kerrigan held each other as prosecutors played the 911 tape in which Brenda Kerrigan told a dispatcher her husband “fell on the floor.’’
In the tape, she could be heard yelling at her son, “Get away from him!’’
When the dispatcher asked her what happened, she responded through tears: “Oh my God, I hope he’s not dead. Oh my God, Oh my God.’’
Toward the end of the exchange, the mother handed the phone to her son.
When the dispatcher asked him what happened, he said: “He fell down. He seemed to have a heart attack.’’
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. 