A doctor who was involved in treating the child who was most seriously injured in the stabbings at Parnell Square in November 2023, has said the little girl’s heart was not beating and he thought she was dead.
Mike Boyle, who is head of the neo-natal department at the Rotunda Hospital, was giving evidence in the trial of 52-year-old Riad Bouchaker, who has denied attempting to murder three children.
Mr Bouchaker, of no fixed abode, has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting four other people including a creche worker and two other children.
Dr Boyle said at around 1.50pm on the afternoon of 23 November 2023, he got a call from the consultant on duty in the Rotunda’s intensive care unit. He was told an ambulance due to collect a baby had not arrived and had been flagged down at Parnell Square where there had been a stabbing.
Dr Boyle said he ran immediately to the area. He saw members of the Rotunda’s ambulance team tending to a little girl who was on the ground.
He said the child “looked grey”, there were drains in her chest and chest compressions were ongoing.
Dr Boyle said there was no pulse present and the child’s appearance suggested her heart was not beating. He said another doctor ran back over to the Rotunda and blood was mobilised from the laboratory. He said they went against all protocols and “just ran with things”.
He said it was the type of blood that could be given to anyone.
Dr Boyle said the little girl needed to be stabilised and did not have time to go anywhere else but Temple Street children’s hospital even though they did not have heart surgeons there.
He felt she needed to go straight to an operating theatre so he ran to Temple street’s Emergency Department to tell them the girl should not be taken there and then ran up to the hospital’s operating theatre and asked them to make space for her.
He asked a colleague who was an anaesthetist to call the Mater Hospital and see if they could send a heart surgeon down to Temple Street.
Asked what condition he thought the little girl was in from observing her on the ground, Dr Boyle told the court he thought she was dead.
The court also heard from Garda Ian Walsh who arrived at the scene and was directed by a member of the public to an area where there was a knife.
Garda Walsh retrieved the knife which was put into a tube and preserved. The knife, which was around 36cm long, was produced in court and shown to the garda and to members of the jury.
‘Really large knife’
Corinne Allen told the court she had a parent teacher meeting with her child’s teacher and was leaving the school just after 1.35pm with her two young children.
At the door leading out onto Parnell Square, she saw a man and woman struggling.
The man was facing her and the woman, whom she knew to be the creche worker, had her back to her.
She said the man was pulling the woman’s arm pretty aggressively and she did not really know what was happening. At that point, she said, she saw a “really large knife” in his hand. She described the knife as being longer than your average kitchen knife with a clean blade and no jagged edges.
Ms Allen said she saw the man stabbing the woman in the side. She said he stabbed her a few times and she must have fallen to the ground.
She said the man then walked straight towards the children who were lined up outside, put his hand on one of the kids’ shoulders and gestured towards the child with the knife.
At that stage Ms Allen said she ran back into the school with her children. She said she was panicking and telling the teachers that “he’s going to stab the kids”.
Ms Allen said children began to come into the school and she saw a little boy with a cut to his neck and a little girl with a large amount of blood on the crown of her head.
Under cross-examination Ms Allen insisted that she had told gardaí that she had seen the man stab the woman despite this not being recorded in her statement to gardaí.
She also told Mr Bouchaker’s barrister, that certain aspects of the event were ingrained in her brain and she would never forget it.
Garda Gerard Dunne told the court that when he arrived at the scene he saw a man wearing a high visibility learner bike jacket who was visibly upset.
The man told him he had been involved in dealing with a man who had a knife.
Garda Dunne agreed the man was Brazilian delivery driver, Caio Benicio, who gave evidence earlier in the trial.
Garda Dunne also accompanied creche worker Leanne Flynn to hospital in an ambulance. He said she had a visible injury to her right side and was screaming and shouting as she was in a lot of pain.