A 14-year-old boy died in hospital after being stabbed in the head with a screwdriver in front of his house, the Central Criminal Court heard yesterday.
The youth charged with the murder of Ben Smyth (14), of Cushlawn Park, Tallaght, on August 19th, 1998, was 16 at the time.
Mr Eamonn Leahy SC, opening the prosecution case, said that on the night of the killing Ben Smyth and his brother, David, were sitting on a wall next to their house, chatting with other children.
"It's difficult to think of a more innocent, a more innocuous or a more inoffensive activity for a young boy to be engaged in, in the shadow of his own house," Mr Leahy said.
The accused boy (who cannot be named because he was a minor) approached the group of children along with another youth and asked for a cigarette. One by one, the children said they had none, and when he asked Ben and David Smyth, they also refused.
"A short conversation then ensued between Ben Smyth and his brother, which had absolutely nothing to do with the accused," Mr Leahy said.
Words were exchanged between them and a scuffle broke out, during which the youth struck Ben Smyth a blow to the side of the head, which "appears to have been struck with a screwdriver".
Ben Smyth's brother, David, told the court that when the two youths first approached their group he only recognised one of them, and he had never seen the other, the accused boy, before. He agreed that he had told gardai: "One of them, the one I didn't know, was walking unsteady."
When they told the youths they had no cigarettes, he then turned to his brother, Ben, and said he had something in his eye.
"Then one of them turned around and shouted at Ben, `What are you saying?' I told them I was talking to Ben, not to him, and he then pushed his hat into my face and said, `What was I saying then', and I told him to get lost."
The witness said "the guy with the peaked baseball cap" then went to hit him, but he grabbed him by the throat and hit him in the side of the head.
A scuffle broke out during which he felt himself being struck on the back of the head with something. He then saw the youth holding something in his hand, but didn't see what it was.
As he was attacking him, the youth said "he was going to ram the thing into my head".
He then jumped over his garden wall. When he made it into the driveway of the house, he turned and saw his brother, Ben, lying on the ground. He hadn't realised at that stage that he himself was cut.
He saw the two youths disappearing down the street and "ran down after them a few steps and shouted something".
He was later treated for wounds to his neck, back and head.
A boy who was 10 at the time said that after the accused youth asked Ben and David Smyth for a cigarette, he heard David say to Ben, "I've something in my eye," and Ben reply, "Is it your pupil?"
He agreed with Mr Patrick Gageby SC, defending, that at that moment the youth with the baseball cap seemed to have thought that Ben and David had said something nasty about him.
A 13-year-old boy told the jury that after the youth with the baseball cap fought with David the youth then went over to Ben and said something. "Ben cursed at him and the guy said, `Well, you won't be laughing at me again,' and it looked like he hit him a dig on the head."
The trial continues today.