AN AUSTRALIAN MAN has pleaded guilty to assaulting, but not guilty to murdering, an Irish man who was killed in an attack outside Melbourne last August.

Luke James Wentholt, 31, admitted seven charges of assaulting Dublin man David Greene and his friend David Byas at a boarding house in St Kilda East – but pleaded not guilty to murdering 30-year-old Greene.

The Herald Sun reported that members of Greene’s family laughed aloud in the court as Wentholt entered his pleas at Melbourne Magistrates Court.

Wentholt’s former girlfriend Shayla Pullen told the court that she had tried to stop her then-partner from his “forceful stomping” on Greene and his friend David Byas, also from Ireland.

She said she believed Wentholt was drunk, and had been aggravated by Greene after the Dubliner made jokes about having accidentally seen Pullen without her clothes on earlier that week.

AAP added that Pullen told the court how Wentholt asked to see Greene outside for a moment – but then heard sounds of smashing and yelling.

When she went to investigate, she said she saw Wentholt stomping his bare foot on Greene’s head, while Byas lay face down on the ground. “I just remember there was lots of blood everywhere,” she said.

Both Greene and the defendant lived at a boarding house on Lynedoch Avenue in St Kilda East, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne, when they got into an argument in the early hours of August 26 last year.

All three men were hospitalised after the incident; Byas spent four days in a coma, while Greene died two weeks after the attack.

A pathologist told the court that Greene had died from a head injury, likely caused by one or more blows to the head – but said he could not exclude the possibility that Greene had a previous brain injury, or whether stomping on him or kicking him could have worsened this injury.

Though the court was told that a bloodied hammer had been found at the scene, in line with reports from the time of the attack, there was no indication that a hammer face had caused any of the injuries Greene had sustained.

Wentholt was ordered to stand trial on the murder charge, and will face a directions hearing later this month.