A woman has described being followed by a man on a bicycle in Tullamore, Co Offaly, as she was out on a walk on 12 January 2022, less than two hours before the body of school teacher Ashling Murphy was discovered in a ditch beside the Grand Canal.
Ann Marie Kelly was giving evidence at the trial of 33-year-old Jozef Puska, who has denied the murder of Ms Murphy on 12 January last year.
She said the man stared at her in an intimidating way as he passed her in slow motion.
Primary school teacher Ann Marie Kelly told the jury at the Central Criminal Court that she made contact with gardaí when she first heard about the murder of Ms Murphy on the news on 12 January 2022.
She said she contacted gardaí because there was a man following her for "quite a bit of time" as she was on her walk to the Grand Canal on the same day.
Ms Kelly said she was walking her dog past McDonald's in Tullamore when she first noticed someone behind her on a bike.
She said she felt someone very close to her. She turned around and looked and saw a man cycling a bike very slowly behind her and staring directly at her.
She said the footpath widened and she stepped in to let the man pass but he would not pass, she said.
She said she continued walking, but felt very uncomfortable.
She stopped and decided to look at her phone to make sure the man had to pass her.
She said he passed her in "really, really slow motion".
As he did so, she said he looked back and was staring directly at her for what felt like a few minutes but was probably a few seconds.
She said he was going past her "literally in slow motion," looking back over his shoulder, staring directly back at her.
"It felt like an intimidating stare," she said.
CCTV
When she got to the Grand Canal, she let her dog off the lead and noticed the man standing to the left of her holding his bicycle and looking at her.
She said she was nervous of the man and made a quick decision that he would not be able to bring his bike down the mucky, grassy side of the canal so she continued walking.
She said she noticed the man was behind her walking quite fast with his bike. At one point he was only a foot behind her, she said.
She stopped and the man went in front of her "walking his bike very, very slowly".
She decided to put her head down and jog past him, conscious not to make eye contact or engage with him.
She wanted to cross over the lock as she wanted to get away from the man, but she was nervous about bringing the dog over the lock.
Ms Kelly described the people she had encountered on her walk.
The last person she saw was a girl in her mid-20s, she said, wearing a peachy-coloured hat.
She said the girl was "really friendly, smiley and chatty".
Her dog went running up to her and the girl was petting him for a bit
Ms Kelly identified herself on CCTV footage from afternoon of 12 January, which she watched for the first time in court.
Lawyers for Mr Puska put it to her that Mr Puska recollected passing her on his bicycle and looking at her.
But defence counsel Michael Bowman said he did not believe he had stared at her and never intended to stare at her.
Ms Kelly said that is what she saw – he was staring at her.
Mr Bowman said Mr Puska was in close proximity to Ms Kelly but was not following her.
Ms Kelly said it appeared like he was following her.
Read more: The trial of Jozef Puska - the evidence so far
The trial also heard from Beata Borowska who was seen on the CCTV footage walking towards Tesco in Tullamore shortly before Ms Kelly is seen on the footage.
Mr Puska can be seen cycling behind her.
Ms Borowska identified herself on the footage, but she agreed she had no awareness of anyone behind her.
She said she didn’t remember anything unusual about the day and all she remembered was going to Tesco.
Puncture wounds
Earlier, the trial heard that Mr Puska had puncture wounds to his abdomen as well as scratches to his face and hands when paramedics called to an apartment in Dublin the day after Ms Murphy had been killed.
Advanced Paramedic Neil Cusker said when he and his colleagues arrived at an apartment in Crumlin after 11am on 13 January 2022, they found a man in a bedroom hunched over a bedside locker.
They had been told there had been a stabbing incident. The man appeared to be in pain and was making groaning and moaning noises. He had no top on and was wearing tracksuit bottoms.
When they examined him he appeared to have three wounds across his abdomen.
The wounds were not actively bleeding, he said, and did not appear to be fresh.
Mr Cusker noticed scratch marks on the man’s head and hands.
He described the wounds as small and thin and he said he could not tell how deep they were.
Mr Cusker said the man did not speak English to the paramedics and a family member translated for him.
He said he gave the man medication to stop any internal bleeding as well as morphine for pain.
Paramedic Rian Finch said she saw three small puncture wounds across the man’s lower abdomen.
She said the scratches on his head and arms appeared to be superficial wounds and did not need any treatment.
She said the patient didn’t make eye contact with her and she spoke to a woman to try to get information.
A decision was made to transfer him to an ambulance, and he was brought to St James’s Hospital, accompanied by his cousin.
Witnesses
The trial also heard from two separate witnesses who saw a man walking along the bypass outside Tullamore on the night of the murder.
Niamh Arthur was driving home with her boyfriend sometime around 8.30pm when she saw a man in dark clothing "acting kind of suspicious" along the side of the N52.
She said the man was wearing dark clothing.
He was kind of crouching and acting weird trying to keep himself tucked in along the verge, she told the court.
She thought he maybe got kicked out of a car or something like that and was trying to be hidden.
Ms Arthur said it was very unusual to see pedestrians along that road at that time of night.
You would have to take a long, long walk to get there, she said, it was not a safe route to take.
Roy Jennings described leaving his house around 8.20pm that night.
He said he had heard what had happened by the canal and drove down to the Daingean Road car park as he was curious.
On his way to a supermarket, a man appeared out of nowhere in the pitch blackness, he said, walking on the side of the road.
On his way home he saw the man again.
His clothing stood out, he said as it was dirty looking as if he had been rolling in grass or muck.
His tracksuit bottoms had a distinctive white stripe down the side.
He said it came into his head that "this could be the guy" who had attacked Ms Murphy.
But he thought it could not be as the guards had a suspect already. He said, however, he thought it did not seem right.
However, a couple of days later, he said he was sent am image of the alleged suspect on a bike and he contacted gardaí after seeing his distinctive tracksuit bottoms with a white stripe.
The trial will continue tomorrow.
