SCARLETT FAULKNER WAS “terrified” of her new boyfriend’s ex-wife, who is on trial for her murder, and believed she was “going to do something bad to her” in the hours before she was beaten to death, a witness has told the Central Criminal Court.

The trial also heard today that a passerby, Niamh Floyd, saw a woman at the scene of Ms Faulkner’s alleged murder running towards the car in which she was a passenger. Ms Floyd described the woman holding onto the mirror of the car as the witness told her partner to drive away.

Looking through the car’s rear window, Ms Floyd said she could see someone holding what might have been a weapon and moving towards the woman.

She said she looked away, because she “didn’t want to see what was going to happen after that”. Ms Floyd said she and her partner called emergency services and said someone could be injured and an ambulance might be needed.

The trial also heard from a witness, who can’t be named for legal reasons, who said her then partner was a close friend of the married man Scarlett had begun seeing.

She said Scarlett and her new boyfriend called to her apartment in Limerick City on Saturday, 21 March last, the same day that the deceased received injuries that led to her death.

She told prosecution counsel Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing that Scarlett spoke to her about her new relationship and said she “knew” her boyfriend’s ex-wife was “going to do something bad to her” and that she was “terrified”.

It is the prosecution’s case that later that evening, the 41-year-old accused rammed her ex-husband’s van off the road before a then 16-year-old girl beat Ms Faulkner to death with a metal pole.

Opening the case this week, Mr Ó Dúnlaing said that although the evidence will be that all the injuries suffered by the deceased were inflicted by the teenage girl, both the accused engaged in a joint enterprise to kill or cause serious harm.

Mr Ó Dúnlaing said they had “hunted down” the accused woman’s former husband and Ms Faulkner with the intention of causing serious harm to both of them.

The now 17-year-old, who cannot be identified because she is a minor, has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter.

Her co-accused pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Faulkner (28), who died on 13 April this year following an incident at Birdhill, Co Tipperary, on 21 March.

She also pleaded not guilty to burglary, entering a building as a trespasser and causing criminal damage at an address in Co Tipperary, on 20 March.

She pleaded not guilty to a further charge of burglary and committing assault causing harm, at an address in Limerick on 21 March.

Today’s first witness said that shortly after Scarlett and her boyfriend had left the apartment, a teenage boy and the accused woman arrived.

She said the accused was “roaring”, demanding to know where her ex-husband was and struck the witness’s partner with her fist, causing a cut to his lip. The teenager used the baseball bat to strike the same man, causing a cut to the back of his head.

Chelsea Poneyi said she and her boyfriend, Jeffery Buckley, lived with the previous witness and her partner, who owned the apartment, for about two months.

On 21 March this year, she said she recalled Scarlett and her new boyfriend were doing drugs in a bedroom in the apartment.

Ms Poneyi said she believed they were smoking crack cocaine, but she would always go into her own room when others in the apartment started taking drugs. From her room, she said she could hear “bickering” between Scarlett and her boyfriend.

Ms Poneyi fell asleep but was awoken by the accused “barging” into her room demanding to know where her ex-husband was. The witness told her she didn’t know him and when she got out of bed, she saw the younger male carrying a baseball bat.

Ms Poneyi said she didn’t want to get involved in “whatever that situation was”, so she closed the bedroom door. She said she could hear the accused asking the apartment owner where her ex-husband and Scarlett were.

As the accused was leaving the apartment, Ms Poneyi said she heard her saying that if any of them contacted gardaí, “they would be dead”.

Marc Thompson SC, for the older accused, said his client takes no issue with most of Ms Poneyi’s evidence. However, he said his client has no memory of ever asking to know where Scarlett was.

Jeffery Buckley told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that the accused “barged open” the bedroom door wearing a pink and white dressing gown and began “roaring”, demanding to know where her ex-husband was.

He described her as being “like a bull in a China shop” and when she left the bedroom, he closed the door because he was afraid.

The mother-in-law of the older accused told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that on the same day, she was at home in Tipperary when the accused arrived, demanding to know where her ex-husband was.

She said: “She was angry, but maybe she had a right to be, like any wife would… I would be very violent too.”

She agreed that the accused had pointed to a mobile home belonging to her estranged husband and said: “That’s the trailer he got for his crackhead prostitute.”

The accused also called the witness a “smelly old yoke” and tore up wedding photos which she left near the gate to the property.

The witness identified herself on mobile phone footage of the same incident which was recorded by the accused.

Under cross-examination the witness agreed with Mr Thompson that the accused was shouting and making threats and at one point said: “He’s dead, you may pick another plot for him,” meaning that they should get another burial plot for their son.

She agreed that the accused was angry at the thought of her husband cheating on her with Ms Faulkner, and she is the “type of person that she can get angry and shout and roar”.

However, the witness said she didn’t know anything about her son having a history of violence towards the accused.

The father-in-law told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that his son and Ms Faulkner pulled up to the house shortly after the accused had left.

He said he told his son to go because his wife was looking for him.

“That’s a mistake I regret for the rest of my life,” he said. “I should have put her in my house and nothing would have happened to her. I’m ashamed of my life.”

The witness agreed with Mr Thompson that during a phone call with the accused later that day, she was angry and called him a “yellow, handicapped, cancery bastard” and a liar.

He agreed that she was angry and wanted to hurt him, but the witness added: “My mother reared no bastards.”

Niamh Floyd told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that she and her partner were driving near to where it is alleged the accused used her car to ram her ex-husband’s van off the road.

She said she saw in the aftermath of the collision a man getting out of the van and taking an axe or a sledgehammer which he used to smash the back window of the car.

She told her partner, who was driving, to speed away and as he was trying to turn, she said she saw a woman running towards their car.

Ms Floyd told her partner to lock the doors and to “speed up”, adding: “I didn’t know what she was running to our car for, what was going to happen next.”

She said the woman pulled out the wiper and stood in front of the car, preventing them from moving. When she moved to the passenger side, the witness’s partner drove away while the woman “grabbed the mirror, she was trying to hold onto the car”.

Once they had driven a distance down the road, Ms Floyd said she looked back and saw someone running towards the woman.

She may have been holding “some sort of weapon” but Ms Floyd said she looked away because, she said: “I didn’t want to see what was going to happen after that.”

Ms Floyd said she called gardaí and said there could be someone injured, so an ambulance might be needed.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo and a jury of eight men and four women.