The Japan Times - Jury hears social-media image helped identify teen in Scarlett Faulkner case

The now 17-year-old has pleaded not guilty to Ms Faulkner's murder but guilty to manslaughter A teenager accused of Scarlett Faulkner's murder was identified on a sun bed in a 'selfie' taken just over five hours after the fatal assault, the Central Criminal Court has heard.

The court also heard that the teenager sent a message to a friend saying she was "bored off my brains" a little over 90 minutes after the fatal assault. She recorded a message hours after the fatal assault saying: "I battered her with a bar. Her brains were open," the trial jury heard.

In another voice message that evening, she said: "The young one is in hospital on breathing tubes, she can't breathe. she is broke up. I think I'm going to be getting charged with it and locked up." The now 17-year-old has pleaded not guilty to Ms Faulkner's murder but guilty to manslaughter.

A 41-year-old woman is alleged to have been part of a joint enterprise with the teenager to kill or cause serious injury to Ms Faulkner and the older accused's estranged husband, who had begun a relationship with the deceased. She has pleaded not guilty to murder.

In his opening speech, Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing SC, prosecuting, told the jury that the motive for the attack was that Ms Faulkner had begun a relationship with the older accused's husband. Mr Ó Dúnlaing said the prosecution would seek to prove that the accused "hunted down" Ms Faulkner and her new boyfriend for 24 hours. He said she finally spotted her husband in a van, chased him and rammed him off the road at the Birdhill roundabout before the teenage accused attacked Ms Faulkner by the side of the road. Sgt Jennifer Skelly today told Mr Ó Dúnlaing that she examined information gleaned from mobile phones belonging to the two accused and other people who formed part of the garda investigation.

Sgt Skelly said the alleged assault on Ms Faulkner happened just after 5.20pm on Saturday March 21. At 6.55pm that evening, she said the younger accused sent a message to a friend saying: "Come here, I'm bored off my brains x." Later that evening, the accused sent a text to the same friend, saying "the guards" were outside her uncle's home. Her friend replied: "They were outside ours as well, scary s**t."

Her friend sent a further text saying: "You're going to jail girl, I'm so scared." The accused replied: "ha ha [accused's name] be singing like Beyonce." Sgt Skelly then played a series of audio clips recorded by the teenage accused from 8.28pm that night.

In the first message, she described being a passenger in a car as the older accused chased her husband, who was driving a van. The teenager described her co-accused "ramming and ramming" the van until it went off the road. She said "your one" got out of the van and "kept running". She added: "I was running up the road and my shoes were gone and I battered her with a bar. Her brains were open. Her brains were on the floor. I got the bar and stuck it into her eyeball. I gave her some beating."

Sgt Skelly said at between 10.26pm and 10.36pm on the same date, the younger accused took a series of "selfies" on her phone. The witness identified the accused in a photograph taken at 10.36pm, adding that she was "on a sunbed" when taking the picture. The trial continues before Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo and a jury of eight men and four women.

M.Fujitav--JT