Our Legal Affairs Correspondent Orla O'Donnell looks back at the first week of evidence in the trial of Jozef Puska who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Ashling Murphy in January 2022.
This trial will not hear a whole lot about Ashling Murphy - prosecuting counsel Anne Marie Lawlor warned the jury at the outset of her opening speech on Tuesday that they might find this somewhat jarring.
Ms Lawlor warned the jurors that even though the death of a young woman such as Ms Murphy might cause understandable visceral revulsion, they had to approach the case clinically, disregarding any feelings of sympathy or outside commentary on any kind of media.The primary school teacher died as a result of being stabbed 11 times on the right side of her neck.She detailed the evidence the prosecution intended to call relating to 33-year-old Mr Puska.
The nine men and three women on the jury were given maps of scenes in Tullamore and Dublin as well as booklets of photographs before hearing from the first eyewitnesses.On the afternoon of 12 January they arranged to meet up for a run beside the Grand Canal. Ms Marron was on maternity leave. Ms Stack had a brief window to get some exercise before picking her daughter up from secondary school.
Ms Stack looked down into the embankment and saw the back of a man's jacket. She shouted 'are you ok'. But when he turned around she said she could see clearly that the man was holding a girl down. That was where the noise they had heard was coming from, she told the jury. She described the girl she saw kicking her legs as if she was doing scissors kicks in the gym, raising her legs"really high", using her core to lift her legs.
The court has heard another man was arrested in relation to Ms Murphy's murder after Garda Andrew Dolan suggested to his colleagues that Ms Stack’s description of the attacker fitted a man who was known to him.Witnesses at the scene One of the Waterways Ireland workers Charlie Kelly arrived shortly after Mr Molloy. He said he knew the woman he could see was dead because there was very little colour in her hands. They were"snow white" he said.He and his colleague Garda Shane Hunter got down into the briar-covered ditch and began doing chest compressions.
He described Ms Murphy’s hair being matted with blood and totally covering her face. He could see a substantial number of wounds to the right side of her neck he said. And he said Ms Murphy’s eyes and mouth were open."She was in a non-shockable rhythm," he told the court. That meant her heart had flatlined and she could not be shocked.
There was 12 knife wounds to the right side of her neck, Dr Collis told the court. 11 of these were stab wounds and it was these which had caused Ms Murphy’s death. There were no contributory factors. The court has been told by Mr Bowman that Mr Puska accepts these wounds were the cause of Ms Murphy’s death.
They included Ms Murphy’s top from her local club Kilcormac Killoughey GAA as well as a white T-shirt. Both were dirty and blood stained. Garda Lawlor also identified Ms Murphy’s fitbit, her necklace, a gold ring and a blood-stained scarf. Items he had observed at the scene were also produced in court - Ms Murphy’s sunglasses, her light pink woolly hat with a furry bobble and her blue Nike runners.
The court heard there was a gap in the footage of around half an hour. The prosecution suggested he was cycling around a park in the town for this period but the footage from the park, later shown to the jury was of"terrible" quality, Garda Harney said. Garda Harney said that from this point on, there are no further sightings of Mr Puska on CCTV that day until much later that night, when the prosecution says he can be seen on footage coming from a bypass outside the town.She can be seen leaving Durrow National School at 14:37pm, getting into her car and driving towards Tullamore.
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