Murder accused had just buried his grandfather

A Dublin man accused of murder was on top of the victim with a knife in his hand during a street fight on the night of his grandfather's funeral, a court heard today.

Gerard Dunne's ex-girlfriend Edel McNeill told a murder trial jury at the Central Criminal Court he had admitted to her he had stabbed Liam Thompson (20) during a fight in 1999.

"He said, 'Liam was dead' and he was crying and said, 'I didn't mean to kill him but he's dead.'," she said.

Ms McNeill said a knife shown to her in court was one taken from the kitchen of her home, where Dunne had been earlier, and it was later "thrown in the canal when they were finished with it".

Dunne (29), with an address at Rafter's Avenue, Drimnagh in Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to Mr Thompson's murder at Dolphin's Road in Crumlin on January 26, 1999.

Prosecution counsel Ms Mary Ellen Ring SC told the court Mr Thompson died from three stab wounds after he was attacked while walking home from the Rialto House pub in the south city suburb of Rialto where mourners had gathered after the funeral.

The court heard Mr Thompson had been outside the pub when his uncles Harry and Raymond Napier and family friend Eamon O'Dowd got in a wild brawl with Dunne and another man over the use of a public phone.

Harry Napier told the court he was walking home just after the brawl with Mr Thompson when Dunne and another man, Stephen McNeill, attacked him with McNeill yelling, "Stab the bastard, stab the bastard".

"Liam was on the ground, the accused was on top of him. I kicked him as hard as I could. I saw something in his hand - I recognised it as a dark-handled knife with a silver blade.

Under cross examination from defence counsel Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, Mr Napier acknowledged their were discrepancies between his garda statement and his evidence in court about the lead up to the attack.

"God knows what was going through my head at the time. Maybe I did make a mistake or two in my statement," he said.

Raymond Napier told the court the brawl at the phone box started after one of the men he was arguing with asked him if he wanted "the virus" and he thought he might have had a syringe so he hit him.

The trial before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of six men and six women continues tomorrow.