The man who allegedly stabbed schoolboy Thomas Devlin to death told police he had not been on the Somerton Road for "years" because "it's all Catholics up there".
The Belfast Crown Court jury were read the transcript of the first interviews detectives had with Gary Ryan Taylor, 23, in September 2005 where the alleged killer claimed he could not remember where he was on the night of the murder on 10 August 2005.
Taylor, from Mountcollyer Avenue in north Belfast, denies murdering the 15-year-old, attempting to murder his friend Jonathan McKee and a further charge of attempting to cause Mr McKee grievous bodily harm.
Alongside Taylor in the dock is Nigel James Brown, 26, from the Whitewell Road, also north Belfast, who denies the same charges but who has already pleaded guilty to a further count of attempting to inflict GBH on Mr McKee.
Thomas and two friends were attacked by two men walking a dog on the Somerton Road.
It is the Crown case that Taylor stabbed him and Mr McKee with a knife and that brown attacked Mr McKee with a wooden bat.
The jury heard that right at the beginning of the first interview with Taylor, officers put to him that he was involved in the killing.
"I wasn't involved in any shape or form," claimed Taylor who told officers that he could not remember specifically where he was on the night of the murder but was probably in his flat at Ross House in the Mount Vernon estate.
Asked if he ever been on the Somerton Road, Taylor said he had been in the past but that it was "donkeys ago" and when asked why not replied: "Because it's all Catholics up there."
During his next interview Taylor told officers he had been thinking about the night of the murder while "I was sitting in the cell there" and remembered that he had gone to Brown's flat where he drank a bottle of wine and smoked "a couple of joints" of cannabis.
He claimed that at around 11.30pm both he and Brown left the flat with "his ma's dog" and that he intended to call to his grandmother's while Brown was going to the garage for cigarettes so they split up just after they left the block of flats.
The jury heard that Taylor told police he changed his mind as it was too late to call at her house but that on the way home, he ran into "two mates" and they all went to a nearby car park where they smoked more cannabis and he got home just after midnight.
The trial continues.
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