Witness saw female 'bashing' Scarlett Faulkner's head by side of road, murder trial told
Scarlett Faulkner died on April 13 following an incident at Birdhill, Co Tipperary, on March 21.
A witness in the trial of a woman and teenage girl accused of murdering Scarlett Faulkner has described seeing a female "bashing" the deceased's head as she lay on the ground on the side of the road.
The trial also heard on Thursday from a witness who, after he had left the box, called the two accused "f**king dirtbirds".
Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo told the jury that anything they had seen or heard from the witness after he left the box "is not evidence and you are to ignore it completely".
Ten witnesses gave evidence on Thursday of what they witnessed as they drove up to the Birdhill roundabout just off the M7 between Limerick City and Nenagh in County Tipperary on the afternoon of Saturday, March 21, 2026.
Ivan Kennedy told prosecution counsel Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing it was a "lovely, sunny spring day" and he was driving at Birdhill at about 5.20pm with his daughter in the passenger seat.
As he approached the roundabout, he saw a woman trying to open the door of a car which was attempting to do a U-turn.
The car accelerated but because the woman was gripping the handle, she fell forward on her face, he said.
Another female carrying a weapon went up to the woman on the ground and, the witness said: "Started raining down blows on her head numerous times. She was bashing the lady's head in on the ground."
Mr Kennedy said he thought the woman on the ground would die so he pulled onto the hard margin, intending to get out and help. However, his daughter begged him not to get out and told him there was a man using an axe nearby to bash a car that was stopped at the roundabout.
Mr Kennedy said he rolled down his window and shouted "stop" at the top of his voice. The female with the weapon in her hand looked at him and stopped what she had been doing.
Mr Kennedy said he believed he had seen her deliver 10 or 11 blows, and with each strike the head of the woman on the ground moved involuntarily.
Dashcam footage from Mr Kennedy's car that showed the incident was played for the jury.
In his opening speech earlier this week, Mr Ó Dúnlaing told the jury that the motive for the attack was that Ms Faulkner was in a relationship with the older accused's ex-husband.
He said the older woman spent the previous day looking for Ms Faulkner and her new partner before spotting him driving his Transit van.
Adam Coleman was driving at Birdhill when he saw a white van stopped at the roundabout and a woman running towards a man who was holding an axe over his head.
He said the man was not doing anything with the axe but "looked to be dragging out of the woman, pulling on her clothes, trying to pull her back towards him."
About 50 metres further along, he saw "a girl lying on the road who looked to be getting attacked by another girl".
He described the attacker holding a long piece of wood or a stick above her head and "swinging at the head of the girl on the ground".
Mr Coleman said she was striking aggressively, using "nearly as much force as she could possibly be using".
He said the attacker looked to be 17 or 18 and there was a younger girl beside her who appeared to be recording what was happening on a mobile phone.
Michael Tobin told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that he was driving a bus for an under-14 football team when he came across two cars stopped on the road and a woman and a man with implements in their hands.
He said he formed the opinion that members of the Travelling community were "having a bit of a dispute".
As he drove on, he saw a sneaker on the side of the road and then a person lying down. He stopped the bus and opened the door but when he saw the wounds to the woman's head, he drove on because he didn't want the children on the bus to see.
He pulled in about 20 metres further down the road, took a fleece jacket and got off the bus. He learned from a man sitting nearby that the woman on the ground was named Scarlett.
He tried to reassure her, using her name and telling her an ambulance was on the way. She was still breathing but the injuries to her head were "severe", he said.
He could see blood and fragments of either bone or brain on the ground. Her eyes were swollen like two half golf balls and shut tight.
He used the fleece to staunch the wound, cleared blood from her nose and mouth and moved her into the recovery position.
Sheila Ryan, a nurse, arrived and helped Mr Tobin.
She noticed the large head wound which was "bleeding profusely" from what seemed to be "targeted" strikes.
She said to create that kind of wound would have required a number of blows with "quite a bit of effort".
She was "quite amazed", she said, that all the injuries were in one site, on one side of the head.
She said the woman was breathing, but the witness was concerned that she would die at the side of the road while they waited for an ambulance.
Breda Floyd said she was a passenger in a car travelling to Thurles for a game between Kilkenny and Tipperary when, at Birdhill, she noticed a van and car that appeared to be "ramming each other".
The vehicles stopped and she saw a man at the passenger side of the van holding what looked like a sledgehammer.
He went to the car that had stopped and smashed the back window. Ms Floyd said it was "terribly traumatic and frightening" so the driver of the car she was in attempted to do a U-turn to get away.
As he was turning, a woman "appeared from nowhere" beside the car and grabbed the driver's side wiper before moving to the front and then passenger side of the car.
Ms Floyd said the woman looked "totally terrified" and tried to grab the passenger wing mirror and kept trying to grab the car as the driver moved away.
Earlier on Thursday, a witness told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that the deceased and her boyfriend had been in his apartment the previous night and that Saturday morning.
He denied that Scarlett had been smoking crack but accepted that her boyfriend was "sniffing coke".
The witness fell asleep and woke up to see the accused woman, the former wife of Scarlett's new boyfriend, standing over him.
He said the accused was "going on" about her husband and was demanding, in a "very violent way" to know where he was.
She was "frothing at the mouth" he said, and very angry. He got out of bed and the accused hit him with her fist, causing a cut to his lip.
Another younger male, who arrived with the accused, then struck the witness on the back of the head with a miniature baseball bat.
The witness ran out of the apartment into a corridor and managed to get away by running up a flight of stairs. He later realised that he had a wound to the back of his head which was bleeding and sore.
Under cross-examination, the witness agreed with defence counsel for the teenage accused, Colman Cody SC, that in his garda statement, he had said Ms Faulkner smoked crack in his apartment that morning. He said he couldn't explain why that was in his statement and said he may have "got it wrong".
After the witness left the witness box, he leaned over the two accused and called them: "F**king dirtbirds."
The 17-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter.
Her 41-year-old co-accused pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Faulkner (aged 28), who died on April 13 following an incident at Birdhill, Co Tipperary, on March 21, 2026. She also pleaded not guilty to burglary, entering a building as a trespasser and causing criminal damage at an address in Co Tipperary, on March 20.
She pleaded not guilty to a third charge of burglary and committing assault causing harm, at an address in Limerick on March 21.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Naidoo and a jury of eight men and four women.
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