The trial of a woman (41) and a teenage girl (17) who are both charged with the murder of Scarlett Faulker (28) continues before the Central Criminal Court.
A Limerick man told the jury this morning that Ms Faulkner and a man she had recently begun a romantic relationship with stayed at his apartment from the night before she died through to the day of the fatal assault.
The prosecution argues that the older accused was “hunting” for Ms Faulkner after discovering she was in a romantic relationship with her former partner, while it is alleged that the teenage girl is the one who struck the fatal blows.
The witness said that Ms Faulkner was having “girlie chats” with another woman in the apartment and that the man was “snapping coke”.
He said that the pair were in the house the next morning and that sometime later he was woken from his sleep by the older accused standing over him, “foaming” from the mouth and asking where the man was “in a very violent way”.
“I knew from that point on there would be trouble”, he said, adding that the accused “looked very, very suspicious” and that he left; she had something in her hand, “like she was holding something”.
“I didn’t want a belt of anything when I was lying down,” he said, adding that the accused, gave him a “dig” with her hand; he presumed there was something in her other hand
When he got out of bed, he said, “She followed me around my table” and “she kept roaring.”
He said another male, who was also not invited to his house, “clattered me in the back of the head with a mini baseball bat.”
“He split the back of my head open,” he said. Asked by prosecuting counsel Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing SC, “Did you go to hospital? he answered, “I didn’t, to tell you the truth.”
Asked if Ms Faulkner had been “taking anything” in his apartment, he said that “she was smoking cigarettes”, but denied she was smoking “crack cocaine”.
When Colman Cody SC, defending, pointed out that in his Garda statement, made on the 25th of March 2026, he had said that the deceased woman had been smoking crack cocaine, he denied she had consumed drugs while in his apartment.
When pressed, he said, “There were a lot of things said and a lot of questions asked” and that he couldn’t explain how that had got into his statement.
When Mark Thompson SC, defending, put it to the accused that he had a history of drug use, he denied any recent use and said that he had taken cocaine “back in the day”.
Asked if he knew Ms Faulkner was in a relationship with the man, he said, “I didn’t think it was right. I knew there was going to be trouble out of it.”
He said that when the man and the older accused were in a relationship, it was troublesome, with one or the other leaving the home at times.
He denied being aware that the man had cheated on the accused in the past, but said, “I did tell him that it was wrong.”
He denied that the man had come to his apartment to take drugs, saying that he “came to go to sleep because he was tired.”
The witness described the accused woman as coming into his room and standing over him, “With a pair of evil eyes on her.”
When Mr Thompson put it to him that the accused “has a tendency to get angry,” and suggested she has “a temper”, the witness replied, “What woman doesn’t?”
“Every woman’s shouting and roaring,” he said, adding, “She could have knocked at the door. I would have got up and answered.”
“It’s an invasion of my privacy. I was asleep,” he said.
As the witness left the stand, he said, “Pair of dirt birds”, as he walked behind the two accused.
The jury was instructed not to consider anything said outside the witness stand.
Sean Bradley, from Birdhill, told the jury he was driving to a Kilkenny match in Thurles with a friend and the friend’s family.
He said he arrived at the Floyds’ house at around 5 pm, had tea, and left at about 5:15 pm. He was driving, with Ger Floyd beside him and Ger’s wife Breda in the back with their two daughters, Ciara and Niamh.
Mr Bradley said they drove up to the roundabout towards the motorway, moving slowly in traffic. As they approached Apple Green, he told the jury he saw two vehicles on his left, a white van and a dark SUV.
He said one was on the side of the road and the other was at an angle to it. He said people were running down the road towards him, in the middle of the road, about 150 yards away. He thought there were possibly three, but said he could not tell their age or sex. He said he may also have seen a person on the hard shoulder.
He told the jury he knew it was not a traffic accident because of the way people were running. He said that out of the corner of his eye he saw someone come from the left towards the centre of the road, and he stopped. He said he realised there was “a situation” and “got spooked”.
Asked if he did, he replied: “Yes I did.” He told the jury he felt he had to get out of there, and decided to turn the car and go back towards Birdhill.
Ger Floyd told the jury he saw cars swinging in and out, and said it was as if they were “bouncing off” each other. He said this went on for about 10 seconds. At some point, he said, he saw that they had collided. He told the jury it looked as though the car touched the front of the van and then veered towards it, causing the collision.
Mr Floyd said he then saw what looked like a man get out of the passenger side of the van and go from the front to the back. He said the man took something out that looked like an axe or a sledge, and hit the back window of the dark car. Mr Floyd told the jury it was then that he decided to get out of there.
Ciara Floyd told the jury she looked back for only two or three seconds, perhaps two or three times. She said the object looked to her like a bat. She described it as “striking the weapon up and down” and said that, although she could not say for certain, the sound “wasn’t soft”. She said the car she was in was already moving away.
As Mr Bradley turned the car, a woman ran towards it, the court heard.
Mr Floyd told the jury he could not tell where she had come from. Mr Bradley said she was in her late 20s and fair-haired. Mr Floyd described her as of average complexion and build, in her late 20s to 30s. Mr Bradley said she ran around the front of the car, grabbed a wiper, went up the left side and then went back. Mr Floyd said she ran alongside the car as they drove off, grabbed the mirror, lost hold, and tried to grab something else.
Mr Bradley said he could not be sure whether he saw her before it happened because it was “so quick”. “I just drove off,” he told the jury, adding that she was towards the back of the car by then. Mr Floyd said: “She looked very scared as she ran around the car.” Ms Floyd said she “seemed terrified”.
Mr Bradley told the jury there was panic in the car. Remarks made included “lock the doors”, “road rage”, “call the guards”, “put out the mirror” and “He’s after jumping up on the fucking car.” He said his left mirror was pushed in and that he later stopped to fix his wiper. Mr Floyd said a lot of cars were stopping and turning around them.
Ms Floyd told the jury her sister looked up Killaloe Garda station and found it closed, so she rang 999.
Mr Bradley said he was “shocked and stressed” afterwards and that the passengers were quiet. He told the jury he later saw social media footage of the event, filmed from the opposite direction to his travel, but did not see that part in real life. Mr Floyd said: “It was scary” and “a dangerous situation”. He said the family were “quite shaken” and traumatised. Ms Floyd said she was in shock and “traumatised to be honest”, and could not really sleep afterwards.
Ivan Kennedy told the jury he was driving with his daughter from the Birdhill roundabout towards the Apple Green roundabout at about 5:25 pm on Saturday the 21st of March. He described it as “a lovely sunny spring day”.
He said he came upon a “melee”, with cars driving “erratically”. A car did a U-turn and headed towards him. He told the jury there were two men in the front, and that it was flanked by one or two women, one of whom was trying to open a door to get into the vehicle.
Mr Kennedy said his focus was on the woman trying to open the door. He told the jury the car was accelerating towards him on the other side of the road when the woman fell forward on her face as it sped up. Another woman with a weapon then came up to her and began “raining blows down on her head”. He said she was “bashing the lady’s head in” on the ground, and that he thought the woman would die. He described the attack as “vicious”.
He said that as he got close, he pulled into the margin, intending to get out, but his daughter begged him not to say, “Dad, please don’t get out of the car, there’s a fella up there who has an axe; he’s bashing up another car.” He told the jury she also said, “Dad, don’t get involved” and “Dad, keep driving”.
When he came parallel to the attacker, he put down his window and shouted “STOP!, STOP!” at the top of his voice. He told the jury she looked at him and did stop, and that the woman on the ground was lifeless.
He said the only movements he could see from the woman on the ground were from the blows landing on her head and not “independent movement”.
Mr Kennedy described the attacker as having long brown hair, wavy or curly, and appearing to be in her late 20s. Asked whether the woman on the ground was holding anything, he said no; both her hands were free. He said he could hear a great many car horns beeping.
Mr Kennedy told the jury he kept going and called 999. He said he instructed his daughter to “call the police”. As he drove away, he said he saw the man with a “felling axe” having “some kind of a to-do” with another man at the back of a car with its rear passenger and back window smashed.
When Dashcam footage from the witness’s car was played, the jury heard remarks made in the car as it approached the incident, including “What’s going on?” “Some travellers or something,” “She’s going to kill her!” and “God almighty!”
Adam Coleman told the jury he was driving to Ballina, Co. Tipperary, with his girlfriend to get food at a restaurant.
He said he saw a man holding an axe over his head beside a white van, with a woman. He told the jury the man was “pulling at her clothes”, trying to pull her back towards him. He said the man had the axe over his head as he chased her, and that the woman appeared to be trying to get away, towards the white van. Mr Coleman asked his girlfriend to record the man on her phone. He described him as looking bald or short-haired, skinny, and in his 40s or early 50s.
Mr Coleman said that about 50 metres down the road, a girl on the road appeared to be being attacked by another girl. He told the jury the attacker had a weapon above her head and appeared to be swinging it at the girl on the ground, using nearly as much force as she could. He described it as “aggressive”. He said the girl on the ground was face down.
He said a younger girl was standing beside the attack, smaller than the attacker and a few years younger, with red hair. He told the jury she appeared to be recording on a phone.
Mr Coleman said he was in “shock” and had never seen anything like it before. “I decided to keep driving,” he told the jury. He indicated that he asked his girlfriend to call the Gardaí.
Roisín Duggan told the jury she was travelling on the motorway towards Castletroy, heading out past Birdhill. As she drove past, she initially thought what she encountered was a car crash.
She said she saw the rear window and back window of a people carrier smashed. She then saw a man, with a few other people around him, holding an axe. She told the jury she did not really know what was going on.
Ms Duggan said she continued driving slowly and saw a blonde-haired woman lying on the ground, with other women behind her. She described one woman, a girl of 18 or 19, and someone of about 13 or 14. She told the jury one of them had something like “the handle of an old shovel” and was “hitting the girl on the ground in a poking motion”, in a “downward direction”. She said the youngest lifted her leg as if to kick the girl on the ground.
She told the jury that when she drove beside the group, she shouted “Stop fucking hitting her” and used her car horn. She said they looked at her in shock and stopped what they were doing. She drove a short distance and then rang 999.
The trial continues