Jozef Puska has told the Central Criminal Court that both he and Ashling Murphy were attacked by a man along the Grand Canal on the day the schoolteacher died.

The 33-year-old Slovakian native, of Lynally Grove, Mucklagh, County Offaly, denies murdering the schoolteacher in Tullamore in January 2022.

He took to the stand yesterday afternoon and has continued giving evidence this morning.

Speaking through an interpreter, Jozef Puska told the jury of nine men and three women this morning that he was attacked and stabbed by a man along the Grand Canal on January 12th 2022.

He said Ashling Murphy approached the alleged incident, said something to the man and he shouted at her.

Jozef Puska said he was trying to help Ashling Murphy after she was attacked, and that two women approached them from the pavement.

He said one of them shouted at him. They ran away and he said he got scared and ran into a field.

He told the court he later passed out in a ditch.

Under cross examination from prosecuting barrister Ms Anne Marie Lawlor, Jozef Puska accepted that he lied to Gardaí at his parents’ home in Crumlin, as well as to officers in St James’s Hospital on January 13th about being stabbed in Blanchardstown.

When Ms Lawlor suggested that he was following Annemarie Kelly in Tullamore on the day Ashling Murphy died – he denied it and said he wasn’t staring at her.

Ms Lawlor put to him that his evidence is another set of lies concocted for the jury, to which Jozef Puska said ‘I have said what I remember’.