A man accused of murdering an Afghan refugee tried to stab an Irish police officer while trying to resist arrest, a jury heard yesterday.

Garda Richard Lynch said Martin Joyce attacked him with a screwdriver after being stopped in the Irish Republic last December.

Joyce, 22, denies murdering police station cleaner Enayit Khalili, in Fiennes Road, Rose Hill, in March last year.

Garda Lynch told the jury he had arrested Joyce, of Larch Hill, Bradford, West Yorkshire, at a shopping centre near Dublin after receiving reports of an altercation between a man and a woman.

He said: “He became aggressive at the scene and informed me he wasn’t going to be detained by anybody.“ Garda Lynch said he ran after Joyce, who got into a car, but he managed to open the door after a struggle.

He said: “He was kicking out at me with his foot.

“He reached down into the passenger side footwell and picked up a long-handled screwdriver.

“He said: ‘Wait till I get this. I will kill you’.

“He stabbed out at me with it a number of times. There was contact made with my left hand and my chest.”

Garda Lynch added that he broke the car window with his baton before Joyce drove off.

He agreed with Richard Benson, defending, that his injury was a minor cut.

Mr Benson said: “You got that when you broke the car window with the baton. You told a deliberate lie, didn’t you?”

Garda Lynch denied the claim.

The case continues.