A man on trial for the rape and murder of a schoolgirl in Co Galway was involved in two separate rows in his local village on the night of the killing, a jury was told yesterday.
In the Central Criminal Court the accused, a 26-year-old man from Co Galway who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has denied the murder of the 17year-old schoolgirl on December 6th, 1998. He also denies two counts of rape on the same occasion. The case is being heard in camera.
The jury has already heard the defendant was involved in a fight outside a hotel night-club with his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend shortly before midnight on the night of December 5th-6th, 1998.
But in cross-examination of a Garda witness yesterday, the defence revealed there would be evidence that there was another altercation in which the accused was also involved, at a local chip shop. Defence lawyers claim this happened at around 2 a.m.
Mr Barry White SC, defending, also announced his intention to make an application to the judge "to call a raft of witnesses" whose statements were contained in material disclosed to the defence but who do not appear in the book of evidence.
He put it to gardai that while they had not seen the accused during the time in which the girl was believed to have been killed, other civilian witnesses had.
The three gardai operating the patrol car in the area that night all said that they were concerned about the accused man's whereabouts after they last saw him at 12:34 a.m. and had checked at his home but got no reply.
In other evidence, one of the local gardai - since retired - told Mr Denis Buckley SC, prosecuting, that he was checking the movements of people in the locality at 12:50 a.m. on December 13th, 1998, exactly a week after the murder, when he saw the accused coming out of a pub.
"I said to him: `I saw your daughter last night', and he said `I haven't f. . . ing seen my lovely daughter for at least six weeks and now I suppose I won't see her for another 17 years'," the witness said.
The garda said he then asked the man: "What do you mean by that?" and the accused replied: "You f . . . ing well know what I mean." The garda said he noted this in in his official Garda notebook.
The trial continues on Monday.