A woman has described seeing schoolteacher Ashling Murphy "crying out for help" by kicking her legs as hard as she could as a man crouched over her holding her down.
Jenna Stack was giving evidence at the trial of 33-year-old Jozef Puska, from Lynally Grove, Mucklagh in Co Offaly, who denies murdering 23-year-old Ms Murphy beside the Grand Canal in Tullamore, Co Offaly in January 2022.
She denied a suggestion from lawyers for Mr Puska what she had seen was him trying to help Ms Murphy and trying to stop the bleeding in her neck.
Ms Stack told the court she and her friend went for a run along the canal on the afternoon of 12 January 2022.
As they were running, she noticed a bicycle in the brambly hedgerow alongside them. It stood out, she said, as one of the bars was luminous green and she thought it was a strange place for a bike to be.
It was not lying as if someone had fallen off it, it looked like it was pushed down.
Ms Stack said she remarked to her friend that it was a really nice bike and she wondered what it was doing there. They ran on for a couple of feet and then heard an awful lot of rustling in the hedge.
She said it was very loud but it was not an animal. She shouted "are you OK?" and "do you need help?"
They were starting to get frightened, she said, adding the noise was like someone was struggling and she thought maybe someone was in trouble.
She told the court she could see the back of a jacket and shouted "are you OK?".
The man remained crouched down but turned around and she said she could see clearly that he was holding a girl down and that was where the noise was coming from.
She said she asked the man "what are you doing?".
Ms Stack said the man gritted his teeth and told her to get away. She said he had an angry expression, his teeth were grinding and it was terrifying.
She said the man spoke in a foreign accent, and he had a receding hairline, shaved head, sallow skin, dark, distinctive eyebrows and dark stubble on his face.
The girl was kicking and the man was still crouched over her holding her down, Ms Stack said.
She said she could only see the girl from half way down her thighs as far as her runners as the man was covering the other part of her body.
Ms Stack became emotional as she said the only part of her body the girl was able to move was her legs.
She said: "She was kicking so hard."
She said the girl was "crying out for help". She was strong, Ms Stack said, she was using whatever part of her body she could to get help.
She told the court the girl was raising her legs really high as if she was doing scissors kicks in the gym. She said she knew something bad was going to happen and thought the guy was going to rape her.
Ms Stack told the man she had her phone and was going to call the guards, even though neither of the women had their phones with them.
The man lunged towards them and made a move as if to move towards them, Ms Stack said. She said she and her friend ran as fast as they could and tried to get help.
In cross-examination, Defence Counsel Michael Bowman suggested to Ms Stack that what she had seen was Mr Puska endeavoring to find out what had happened and endeavoring to assist Ms Murphy.
Ms Stack replied "no."
Mr Bowman said it was Mr Puska’s recollection that he could not make out what Ms Stack was saying to him and he did not intend to be in any way aggressive.
He said Mr Puska when, he was trying to speak to Ms Stack, caught his leg on a briar and called out in pain.
Ms Stack said that was not the impression she got.
Mr Bowman said his client had no recollection of Ms Stack saying she would call the guards. He said he was instructed that Ms Murphy had reached out and was holding one of his forearms because he was trying to stop the bleeding in her neck.
Ms Stack said she did not see that. She knew something was wrong and that the girl was in distress. She was moving the only part of her body she could she said and Mr Puska was leaning over her.
Under further cross examination, Ms Stack agreed that she had been asked to come to the garda station and identify the man she had seen from a line up in a car park.
She agreed with Mr Bowman that she had picked number six and had told gardaí that she picked him because of his eyes.
She told gardaí she could clearly picture his eyes and head and was 100% sure the person she picked in the ID parade was the person she had seen leaning over the girl.
She agreed that person was not Mr Puska but she said he was "very similar".
And at that time she believed the person she had picked out was the person she had seen.
She said she had not made a mistake by saying she had seen Ms Murphy kicking her legs and had not made a mistake in anything she had said in her evidence.
Ms Stack's friend, Aoife Marron, described how the pathway they were running on sloped down into a ditch where there was a hedge covered in branches and briars.
She said Jenna noticed a bike which was lying on the slope.A few seconds later they heard the rustling and cracking of branches in the ditch.
There was a lot of noise and a lot of movement she said.She said she could see a male with his head down.She thought he had fallen off his bike into the ditch and started shouting are you okay.
She said she remembered the man shouting "ok, ok" - as if he wanted them to move on.She said he started moving up from the slope and she remembered thinking he was going to crawl out and come and get them.
Ms Marron said Jenna began shouting at the man that she had a phone and was going to call the guards and that is when she instantly knew there was something wrong.
As they sprinted away from the scene, she said Jenna told her there was a girl there and she thought she was being raped or about to be raped.
Ms Marron said she was terrified and thought the man was coming after them.
They met two men from Waterways Ireland and began screaming at them to call the guards but she said the men were not really responding to them.
Another man she knew came by on his bike and when they told him what they had seen he cycled back down in the direction of the ditch.
The man, Enda Molloy, gave evidence that he had seen the two women talking to two men in high visibility vests, looking distressed.
He said one of them asked him if he had seen anything and told him a man had his hand on a girl’s mouth.
He said he understood a man had attacked someone and he cycled back to see if he could see anything.
When he saw the bicycle he got off his own bike and looked down into the ditch.Eventually he said he saw a woman lying in the ditch.
He said she was lying face up but her hair was over her face.He shouted to see if he could get a response but there was no answer and he called the guards.
