Accused wishes she could ‘turn back the clock’

A woman on trial for murdering a teenage mother-of-two by stabbing her in the chest outside a supermarket, told gardaí in an interview that she regretted the killing and wished she could turn back the clock.

Kelly Noble (aged 21) is on trial at the Central Criminal Court where she has pleaded not guilty to the murder of 19-year-old Emma McLoughlin outside Pat’s supermarket in Laytown on June 2 last year.

Ms Noble from from Seaview in Laytown, Co Meath also denies a second charge of unlawfully producing a knife in the course of a dispute or a fight, in a manner likely to intimidate or inflict serious injury.

Detective Garda Michael Callaghan told prosecuting counsel Mr Kevin Segrave BL (with Mr Anthony Sammon SC) that he interviewed Ms Noble at Balbriggan Garda Station on June 3.

Asked if she regretted stabbing Ms McLoughlin she said: “Very much so”, and said she had not intended to kill her.

“No way, I just went to the shop to get milk for my kids.”

She said she had got her friend Niamh Cullen to bring the knife down to the scene because Ms McLoughlin would not leave it, and she believed she would “have got the head kicked off me”.

She claimed Ms McLoughlin was saying: “Fight me. Now I’m not pregnant.”

Outside the shop she said she had the knife up her sleeve and let it slip down.

“Emma said: ‘Do you think I’m scared of the knife, do you?’ and came at me and said ‘What the f**k, are you afraid of me?”

She demonstrated to gardaí how she had used the knife. Afterwards she said she left her two children, who were at the scene, with Ms Cullen and ran home.

“Niamh was crying and saying she’d look after the kids in the house.”

She said arresting gardaí did not put handcuffs on her in front of her children and waited until she was outside her house.

There she said: “Someone shouted ‘murderer’ and I knew it was serious.”

Ms Noble said her young daughter had been afraid of Ms McLoughlin because she had seen her coming at the accused with a hammer in the past.

During the interview Ms Noble was shown the kitchen knife allegedly used in the attack and agreed she had asked Ms Cullen to bring it to the scene.

She said: “I didn’t tell her to bring that one, just a knife. When I saw that now, I thought: ‘F**king hell’.”

Asked if she was remorseful she said: “I have more than remorse. If I could turn back the clock I wouldn’t have gone to the shop.”

Det Gda Callaghan agreed with Mr Michael O’Higgins SC that there had been an allegation that Ms McLoughlin had, in the past, got out of a car and threatened Ms Noble with a hammer. He agreed that during the interview Ms Noble had spoken about her past.

Her mother and father were both heroin addicts and the environment she grew up in was one in which acts of extreme violence perpetrated by her father, on her mother, were not uncommon.

Her father died when she was 14 and she was in care before she became pregnant with her daughter and settled in the Laytown area.

The jury was yesterday shown CCTV footage from inside Pat’s supermarket which appeared to show Ms Noble being struck in the face by Ms McLoughlin before the fatal stabbing took place outside.

A statement was read into evidence from a woman called Marlese Louwe who said she had gone to Pat’s shop and had seen two girls arguing by the ATM. She said a girl with a white top and fair hair was holding a blue tissue up to her nose whilst a girl in a blue top was doing all the shouting.

She said the girl in the white was very submissive and had her head down, trying to avoid a row. As she crossed the road outside the shop she said she saw the two girls again and the one who had the tissue up to her nose now had her back to the window while the other girl was screaming at her and kicking, not at the girl, but over in the direction of the store.

She said the girl in white looked like she wanted the conflict to be over and was “maybe too passive for the situation”.

Sergeant Seamus Burke told Mr O’Higgins, defending, that he had had a number of dealings with Emma McLoughlin over the years, most of which were dealt with through the juvenile liaison scheme.

He agreed he had been aware of an allegation that she had assaulted a 12-year-old neighbour and a 7-year-old in separate incidents and that an incident with a boy in school had resulted in a letter being written to the Board of Management.

On April 19, 2004 he agreed an incident had been reported in which a woman called Patricia Byrne was walking with a child in a buggy when a car had bumped into the buggy after being driven at speed. The driver of the car was Emma McLoughlin’s boyfriend Daniel Christodoulides, who was disqualified from the roads for 10 years as a result of the incident.

He said Ms Byrne was a friend of a woman called Sharon O’Donnell who he had witnessed being attacked by Ms McLoughlin outside a garda station.

Sgt Burke said Ms McLoughlin and her partner had at one stage been in conflict with her family.

On April 20 that year, her father Thomas McLoughlin reported being attacked with a jimmy bar by his daughter’s boyfriend, and said he had had to flee for his life on a bicycle.

Emma McLoughlin had also been charged with the possession of a jimmy bar and had been ordered to undergo an anger management course.

Sgt Burke agreed that a number of charges had been adjourned to July 7 2006, the month after her death.

The prosecution has concluded its case and the trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Barry White and the jury of seven women and five men.