A MURDER trial in Dublin heard yesterday how the 18-year-old defendant had told gardaí at the scene: "It was me."
On the second day of the trial at the Central Criminal Court, Garda Áine Dalton told prosecuting counsel Mary Ellen Ring that she had been called to the scene of a reported stabbing on Waterloo Road, Dublin, in the early hours of May 26th last year.
She saw someone lying on the ground surrounded by several people. One of them told her and her colleagues that someone from the nearby house had stabbed the prone figure.
She said gardaí got into the house through an unlocked basement door that led to a kitchen. A long-haired young man wearing baggy black clothes came into the kitchen and told her: "It was me."
Finn Colclough (18), with an address at Waterloo Road, Dublin, denies the murder of student Seán Nolan.
Garda Dalton told Ms Ring that she cautioned Mr Colclough, handcuffed him and led him over to sit at the kitchen table. He told her: "He hit me. He wouldn't get out of the garden. I'm only 17."
She asked him where the knife was that he used and he pointed at a container holding various kitchen utensils. He said it was a black-handled knife but he was not sure which knife it was.
Eric Treacy, a friend of the deceased, told Ms Ring he could see no reason why Mr Colclough and his friends would have been afraid of him, Mr Nolan and another friend, Ciarán Wogan. But he agreed Mr Nolan was not the kind of person to walk away from a fight. He said the two groups met when Mr Nolan and his friends were looking for a girl called Sara who Mr Nolan thought lived on Waterloo Road. Mr Colclough gave directions and they parted on good terms. Mr Treacy said that he and Mr Nolan had been out celebrating leaving school.
They had been on their way to Sara's house and wanted a bottle opener to open some wine they had bought earlier. He told Patrick Gageby, defending, that he could see two people dancing through a ground-floor window and they had waved the bottle to try and get their attention.
He said he had been drinking that night and agreed his recollection of the evening might have been incomplete. He told Ms Ring he remembered a long-haired young man coming out of the house waving a knife. He said Mr Nolan stepped forward and squared up to the oncoming figure.
Mr Treacy said that after a brief scuffle, Mr Nolan fell back clutching his chest before falling.
"I knelt down beside him. I held his head. His head was shaking. I put my hand on his chest."
He agreed with Mr Gageby that Mr Colclough did not seem aware of what had happened and continued shouting at them to get away from his house.
Another friend of the deceased, Mr Wogan, told Mr Gageby that Mr Nolan was very much a leader and not the kind of person who would walk away from a fight.
He said that, rightly or wrongly, Mr Colclough and his two friends had seemed afraid of them and said that he had run up to the front door and knocked on it as a joke.
The trial continues.