The former girlfriend of a man accused of the murder and rape of a teenage schoolgirl on a beach in Co Galway two years ago has told a jury that he hit her and her new boyfriend in a fight outside a disco on the night of the killing.
The prosecution alleges that the defendant and his car were nowhere to be found during a time they allege the schoolgirl was raped and murdered on the night of December 6th, 1998. That afternoon, her body was found in a rocky inlet on a remote beach by a local man out hunting with his dogs.
In the Central Criminal Court, the defendant - a 26year-old who cannot be identified for legal reasons - has denied the murder of the 17year-old. He also denies rape and sexual assault.
The Deputy State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy said: "I gave the cause of death as drowning, and as a contributory cause, compression of the neck."
The pathologist said the lack of signs of asphyxiation suggested that the schoolgirl "was still alive when she went into the water. Given the severity of the injuries to the neck, there is a strong possibility that she was already unconscious when she went into the water," she said.
The post-mortem showed "features of drowning, injuries to the neck, and evidence of sexual assault".
Cross-examined, Dr Cassidy agreed with Mr Barry White SC, defending, that a fracture of the larynx could be caused by attempted resuscitation She said that wrinkling of the girl's hands suggested that she had been in the water "for some hours".
Mr White asked if tripping on the foreshore might account for the injuries to the neck. "No, the pattern of injury in this girl, there are very distinct patterns of injury to her. The neck is one of those areas of the body that is partly protected," the pathologist said.
"It would be extremely unusual to get injuries and marks in the pattern that I saw without there being similar patterns of injury elsewhere in the body - and there were none."
In other evidence, a local woman told Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley SC, prosecuting, that she had been in a relationship with the defendant for a number of years and had a five-year-old child by him.
She stopped seeing him in September 1998. On the night of the killing of the schoolgirl, she was with her new boyfriend, an American who had arrived in Ireland the day before.
They were in a local pub, and the accused was there and "was looking in a very threatening manner" at her, she said.
She and her boyfriend left the pub by the side door, and drove to a hotel in the village nearby. As they queued up to go in to the hotel's disco, the defendant was in the queue behind them and began "verbally abusing" them. An altercation began, during which he hit her and struck her boyfriend.
She said she went into the hotel and called the gardai. As she stood in the hall of the hotel, she said, "I could see him through the window, outside pacing. He was pacing for a while and then he left."
The prosecution alleges that in the hours that followed the defendant raped and murdered the schoolgirl, who had travelled to the disco with friends.
A local garda, now retired, said the defendant was "very agitated" following the altercation involving his former girlfriend and the American. The garda tried to calm him down and the defendant then walked across the roadway and sat on a wall.
Later, as he left the premises, he saw the Red Ford Mondeo turning around on the roadway. It pulled up near a public house. At about 12.30 a.m., he said, the car was still parked there. He also saw the deceased girl sitting in the front passenger seat of another car with her friend, a youth, in the back.
Driving by the hotel a second time, he noticed the accused sitting on a stone wall. He got his colleague to pull up beside him.
"I wound down the passenger window and I said to him, `Go home'. His reply to me was, `It's a free f . . . ing country.' "
The garda described later going to the home of the defendant where he knocked on the window and door but got no reply. When he returned to the place where the red Ford Mondeo had been parked, it was gone. It was about 1.10 a.m.
The trial before Mr Justice Patrick Smith and a jury continues.