A 17-year-old Dublin youth accused of murder started arguing with the 20-year-old victim because he was English, a jury in the Central Criminal Court was told yesterday.
The victim's body lay undiscovered for two days in a field where the alleged murder took place, beside a car park in the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre in Clondalkin, Dublin.
Lisa Brady (18) said the accused didn't like the victim "because he was English". She was giving evidence in the trial of her former boyfriend, Kevin Walsh, Allenton Green, Tallaght, who denies murdering James Burke at the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre, Clondalkin, between September 22nd and 23rd, 2005.
Ms Brady told prosecuting counsel John Aylmer SC, that on the evening of September 23rd, she came home from school and went to meet the accused at Liffey Valley.
She said that when she arrived at about six, Mr Walsh was with a "boy" she had never met before and that they were both drunk.
In her evidence, she said they then went to a field beside the car park outside the Marks & Spencer store, where they drank and talked for about an hour.
At about 7pm, she said they went to the bushes and a row broke out shortly after.
"We were talking for a while and then Kevin and James started arguing," she said.
"At first I thought they were only messing but it wasn't. It was about James being English," she added.
She claimed it was the deceased who threw the first punch and added: "That's when Kevin started hitting him back." She said that after the victim fell to the ground, the accused "wouldn't leave him alone. "James didn't want to fight back then but Kevin kept fighting," she said.
She told the court that the victim was holding on to Mr Walsh's leg while being punched in the face. "He stopped when he went unconscious," she said.
"After James let go of Kevin's leg, he went away for a while and then went back down and started hitting his head off the ground," she said. Ms Brady then said she "tried to get Kevin off him" but that he pushed her away. "He went mad," she said.
"There was blood coming out of his nose and his mouth as well," she added. Ms Brady also said that during the fight she made a phone call to her friend because she was scared and didn't know what was happening.
After the fight they both got a lift with a friend of the accused to a bus stop. The driver of the car urged Mr Walsh to call an ambulance but he didn't do so because he was scared.
Asked why she didn't report the incident, Ms Brady claimed the accused said she'd "get into trouble as well" if she told anyone. She met the accused the following day in the Square in Tallaght. She claimed he said: "would you say he is still alive?" and that she said didn't know.
The last time she saw the accused was when she got on the bus to leave the square and she said that before going home, she went back to the scene of the fight to see whether the deceased was still there.
"I rang Kevin and told him that James was still down there," she said. She claimed she was "really upset" the next morning and that when her father brought her out for a drive, she told him about it. She said that she then went to the Garda station with her father.
Under cross-examination by Michael O'Higgins SC, she admitted she had not been looking at the fight at all times.
She also admitted that the accused moved the deceased man into a sideways position around the same time he started breathing heavily, but she said she didn't know why he did it.
Mr Aylmer told the jury that Mr Burke had moved to Ireland to live with his aunt and uncle a few weeks before his death.
The trial before Mr Justice O'Sullivan continues today.