A woman has told a murder trial jury how she brought a kitchen knife in a child's schoolbag to a woman accused of murder after receiving a phone call from her.
Niamh Cullen, who said she was a friend of the accused Kelly Noble and the deceased Emma McLoughlin, said she did not see the stabbing but tried to comfort Ms Noble's two children and get them to look away as the incident took place.
She was giving evidence yesterday at the Central Criminal Court in the trial of Ms Noble (21) who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Ms McLoughlin (19), a mother of two, who was stabbed to death outside Pat's supermarket in Laytown in June last year.
Ms Noble, Seaview, Laytown, Co Meath, also denies a charge of unlawfully producing a knife in the course of a dispute or a fight, in a manner likely to intimidate or inflict serious injury.
Ms Cullen told Anthony Sammon SC, prosecuting, that she was at Ms Noble's house on June 2nd when Ms Noble went to the supermarket to get cigarettes. Half an hour later, at about 8.30pm, Ms Noble telephoned her own landline but it was a bad line and she could not really hear what was being said.
She understood that Ms Noble was saying that Ms McLoughlin had punched her in the face and there were a gang of girls waiting outside the shop who were going to beat her up.
Ms Cullen said: "She asked me to bring a knife down to Pat's shop and to come down and collect the children." Ms Noble had brought her young son to the shop in a buggy but she was looking after her older daughter, aged four. After the phone call she said: "I grabbed a knife, put it into a small school bag and hurried down to the shop." She had Ms Noble's daughter with her.
At the shop she met a group of children who told her not to go in as there had been a fight in which Ms Noble had got punched.
Inside she met her by the counter and she was holding a tissue to her face, which was bleeding. Ms Noble asked her if she had brought the knife and she indicated the bag which Ms Noble then put on the back of the buggy.
Ms Cullen said they tried to leave the shop and turned left when Ms McLoughlin approached. She said: "She had Kelly, not pinned, but was in front of her stopping her from moving away from the window. Kelly and Emma started to shout at each other and the children started to cry."
She said Emma's younger sister Shona McLoughlin came over to her and told her she was not getting involved and she said she wasn't either. She said Shona was trying to comfort Ms Noble's son, but the boy did not like strangers and became more upset. "I was trying to get the children to calm down and not be looking at the two women," she said.
Next she heard a loud thud and Ms Noble pushed past her taking the buggy with her. She followed with Ms Noble's daughter.
When she turned around to see if anyone was following them, she saw Ms McLoughlin lying on the ground. Ms Cullen told Michael O'Higgins SC, defending, that she did not think Ms Noble was going to use the knife and thought she would only have brandished it to make people stand back. "Otherwise I would never have brought it." She agreed Ms McLoughlin was a fearless person who would not have listened to reason.
Edel McLoughlin gave evidence that she had rung Ms Noble's mobile phone at 10.12pm after the incident to ask her why she had stabbed her sister. She said Ms Noble told her she had "sorted it out" and when she was told Ms McLoughlin was lying dead in hospital, she replied: "She deserved it."
When Mr O'Higgins put it to her that this account was not true, she shook her head. Ms McLoughlin said the phone call had lasted about three minutes but Mr O'Higgins said phone records showed two calls had been made from her phone to Ms Noble's that night, at 21.59pm for two seconds and at 22.12pm for 54 seconds.
Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis said Ms McLoughlin died from a penetrating wound to the chest of 19.5cm.
The trial continues.