Jozef Puska trial hears evidence of hospital admission

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Jozef Puska pleaded not guilty to murdering Ashling Murphy at Cappincur, Tullamore, Co Offaly, on 12 January 2022. The proceedings were reported on 25 October 2023.

Detective Sergeant Brian Jennings told the trial that Puska said through an interpreter in hospital: “I did it, I murdered, I am the murderer.” Jennings said Puska later reiterated that he was sorry, regretted it and “didn’t do it intentionally”.

The detective said he visited Puska two days after Murphy was stabbed to death while exercising by the Grand Canal in Tullamore. Puska told him that two strangers had attacked and stabbed him in Blanchardstown on 12 January. He said scratches on his head and hands came from lying and dragging on the ground while defending himself.

Detective Garda Fergus Hogan said Puska told him: “When she pass I cut her neck. She panic, I panic and then it happened. Will I go for ten years?” Hogan said he did not then know how Murphy had been killed or what injuries she had suffered.

Defence counsel Michael Bowman SC challenged Jennings’s capacity to recollect events, saying that without a recording the court was relying on his note and recollection. Hogan agreed that doctors had refused gardaí permission to speak to Puska three times the previous evening and that nobody went back to a doctor before officers spoke to him on the 14th.

The trial was continuing before Justice Tony Hunt and a jury.