Central Criminal Court:A homeless Dubliner said he didn't realise he had stabbed a 23-year-old man in the heart after the man had called him a "junkie" and grabbed him.
Thomas Kinsella (34), of Orchid House on James’s Street, Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to murdering John Murdoch on August 27th, 2011, insisting that he was defending himself.
The Central Criminal Court has heard that Mr Murdoch was stabbed to death at Cushlawn Way, Cushlawn Dale in Tallaght.The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White.
Yesterday Detective Garda Camon Ryan testified that he arrested Mr Kinsella the following day and interviewed him at Tallaght Garda station.
He said Mr Kinsella told him that he and two friends, a man and a woman, were walking past a shop in Cushlawn shortly after midnight on August 27th.
“There was a group of blokes there. They started saying things like junkies and scumbags,” he said.
He said he and his two friends did not respond and crossed the road.
“They kept following us the whole way,” he said.
He told detectives that this group then began throwing big bricks and bottles at them. He said he became separated from his friends and felt threatened.