52-year-old Riad Bouchaker is on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with attempting to murder three children at Parnell Square in Dublin in November 2023.
He is also charged with assaulting a childcare worker, causing her serious harm, as well as assaulting two other children and a teenager who intervened, and he has been charged with producing a knife in a manner likely to intimidate another person.
Mr Bouchaker has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Our legal affairs correspondent, Órla O’Donnell looks at the evidence heard by the jury so far.
“I stopped breathing for a second but then kept running”.
Every parent knows an unexpected call from a child’s school or crèche rarely brings good news.
When the first witness in this trial happened to see the number of her daughter’s afterschool pop up on her phone at 1.45pm on 23 November 2023, she thought maybe her five-year-old had fallen.
The small, dark-haired woman cried in the witness box for the first time, as she described what she was told by the owner of the crèche; her daughter had been stabbed in front of the school and she had to come.
The woman who worked in the city centre, on the other side of the Liffey, grabbed her things and began running across town.
By the time she got to the Spire, she could see Parnell Square was closed off and she could see ambulances, fire trucks and garda cars.
The woman of the girl who was injured described the scene when she arrived at Parnell Square
She told the court she stopped breathing for a second but kept running until she got there, arriving at the garda cordon seven minutes after receiving the call.
When she told a garda her name, he let her through.
The first thing she saw was “the gentleman in question” – the accused man, Riad Bouchaker – being put into an ambulance.
A garda approached her and told her they were working on her daughter. The woman saw medics around her little girl and could see her pink backpack and pink shoes. She told the court she let them work, because she couldn’t do anything for her child at that moment.
When they managed to put her daughter in an ambulance, she followed her to Temple Street Children’s Hospital in a garda car.
At the hospital she said the doctors were trying to control the blood loss and trying to “regain life into her”.
She told the doctors to keep working and not to stop what they were doing even to keep her updated.
The woman told the court her daughter was without oxygen for about 40 minutes, which caused severe damage to her brain. She is currently in a wheelchair. She is non verbal and answers ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions by blinking.
She is fed through a tube in her stomach and is learning how to swallow again. Her muscles do the opposite of what she wants them to do. She cannot do anything by herself and has to take medication to fall asleep. If she gets too hot or too excited she needs to be sedated. The woman agreed with prosecuting counsel Karl Finnegan that everyone was continuing to do their best for her daughter.
The attack on this little girl and the efforts to save her formed a large part of the evidence heard in the first week and a half of this trial.
The court also heard from the parents of other children who had been injured.
The mother of a six-year-old girl who received an injury to her head went straight to CHI at Crumlin. The mother said at the hospital, she discovered the little girl had a cut to the back of her head and a fragment of her skull had gone. She was discharged the next day.
The mother of the third child that Riad Bouchaker is accused of attempting to murder also gave evidence.
She said she received a phone call to say her son had been hurt in an incident at the school but that he was okay. She went to Crumlin hospital and her son arrived in an ambulance shortly afterwards. She found him looking at cartoons on a garda’s phone. The court heard he had a wound on his neck, which was treated with paper stitches and steri-strips.
Mr Bouchaker is accused of assaulting two other children. The parents of a little girl in senior infants collected her in a classroom. Her father said the little girl’s top and coat were cut and there was a clump of hair stuck to her tracksuit. She had a bump on the back of her head and a nick behind her ear.
The father of a little boy described seeing a cut, which had gone through his son’s jacket, tracksuit top and t-shirt. He also saw a slash mark across the top of the boy’s chest.
A firefighter described other parents gathering at the garda cordons around Parnell Square in “great distress” as they waited for news of their children. He was able to help reassure them that they were safe and they were taken out of the school through a back entrance.
“I ran at him and grabbed him from behind”
Leanne Flynn was described as having shown “extraordinary courage”
The childcare worker who was with the children who were attacked, also gave evidence. The jury members had already seen her on a CCTV compilation played to the court, which included footage of the incident.
Leanne Flynn was described as showing “extraordinary courage” and being “phenomenally brave” by Mr Bouchaker’s barrister as he cross-examined her.
She described how the children who were going to afterschool in the crèche where she worked were lined up as usual at the railings outside the school.
She said a man dressed in dark clothes nearby grabbed her attention. He was at the bus stop but he didn’t take the bus. He was just “standing there looking around” and seemed to be looking for something in his bag.
While she was zipping up a little boy’s coat, the man started to walk towards the children. Ms Flynn said he came towards a little girl “in a crouched motion”. He took out a knife and “just started ferociously stabbing her”, multiple times.
Ms Flynn said she let out a shout, told the man to get away from the children, ran at him and grabbed him from behind.
She said he was still trying to “continuously jab” the little girl as she pulled him back from the children.
Ms Flynn said the man had sallow skin and was “fat with very big eyes and darkish hair.” She said he looked confused, as if he was not expecting an adult to approach him. They were in a tussle and he stabbed her in her back, although she didn’t realise at first that she had been hurt.
She told the court that the man went to try to go back to the children again “swinging the knife”. She said she went back over and grabbed him a second time. Some of the children had moved by this stage, others were frozen with panic. She described screaming “somebody help me, he has a knife”.
Mr Bouchaker’s barrister put it to Ms Flynn that when he looked at her, he looked “frantic” or as if something was wrong.
He pointed out that Mr Bouchaker had a brain injury going back some years. But Ms Flynn said he did not look like there was something wrong with him. She said the children seemed to be his main focus.
“I got hurt because I intervened,” she said, “he seemed hellbent on getting to the children”.
Ms Flynn was described as having a “huge” stab wound to her left side. One firefighter said an internal organ, possibly a lung, could be seen protruding from it. She was found to have a collapsed lung, her diaphragm was severed, her spleen was removed and part of her stomach was injured. She was put into an induced coma and had a number of surgeries. She is still not back in work.
“He had to be put down”
Others who intervened in the incident also gave evidence to the court.
Warren Donohue was in town celebrating his daughter’s 11th birthday with relatives. He heard a commotion and saw what he thought at first was a fight between a man and woman. However when he ran over he realised the “scale of things” and saw a “fella with a knife trying to cut little kids”.
Warren Donohue gave evidence that he heard a commotion when he was on Parnell Square
Mr Donohue said he gave the man a dig in the jaw, telling the court “he had to be put down”, because of what he was doing.
When he was on the ground he hit him again, to make sure he stayed there. Mr Donohue left the scene quickly to find his daughter who had gone missing in the chaos.
Delivery driver Caio Benicio was coming down Parnell Square East on his motorbike when he saw people screaming and running. He thought at first it was a “drug user fight”, which he said was common in the city centre. However, he then realised it was a “big man with a woman and a little kid” and the woman was trying to protect the child.
He saw the man grab the little girl with one hand and start to stab the girl in the chest with a “big sharp knife”.
Caio Benicio described how he abandoned his bike as he saw the incident unfolding
Mr Benicio abandoned his bike, took off his helmet and hit the man in the head with it. The impact made the helmet slip from his hand. He told the court the man fell on the floor and he gave him two or three punches but stopped when he realised the man couldn’t react and he saw blood on his mouth.
Siobhan Kearney was in the area as she was attending the inquest into the Stardust fire in Pillar Room at the Rotunda Hospital. Her brother, Liam, had died as a result of injuries sustained in the blaze.
She said she was having a cigarette outside when she heard a scream and saw a man with a knife across the road. She told the court she saw him “stabbing the kids” and she “took across the road”.
Ms Kearney, who is a chef, said she knew the damage the knife could do to anyone “let alone a little kiddie”.
Siobhan Kearney told the court she was outside the Pillar Room when she saw a man with a knife
She said she jumped on the man to try to get him to the ground and things “went really crazy”.
She kept screaming “get the f**king kids out of the way”. When she realised the man was knocked out and not going to do any more damage, she locked hands with a girl to try to protect him and shouted at those trying to get at him, that they were “not f**king savages”.
Alan Lorena Guille, who was 17 years old at the time, and was also a chef, said he was on his way to work when he heard a woman screaming and saw a man assaulting a woman with children nearby.
He said he crossed the road to “disarm the man” and grabbed the knife from his hand. “It was very fast” he said.
17-year-old chef Alan Lorena Guille said he grabbed the knife from the man’s hand
Mr Guille said he had to use force to remove the knife and scratched his finger and cheek in the process, but he wasn’t bleeding and he said his injuries were not serious.
He told the court another man took the knife and threw it on to a green area nearby.
Mr Justice Tony Hunt told the now 20-year-old that he was very modest and very brave.
Eder Nascimento Dos Santos, said he jumped off his bike and tried to help. He saw the knife on the floor and took it away to prevent other people getting hurt.
Eder Nascimento Dos Santos said he took the knife away to prevent people getting hurt
Another cyclist, Oisín Murphy, said he hit the attacker on the head with his bicycle lock.
These witnesses and other eyewitnesses were cross-examined by Mr Bouchaker’s lawyer about what exactly they had seen and the sequence of events they remembered.
Some acknowledged their memories may have been affected by the passage of time and the trauma of what they had witnessed. Others insisted they remembered the events with precision.
“We went against all protocols and just ran with things”
The Rotunda Hospital and Temple Street Children’s Hospital are very close to Parnell Square, which meant paramedics and specialist doctors were on the scene very quickly.
Conor Garvey was driving an ambulance to pick up a baby at the Rotunda when someone began “frantically” waving his arms at him and he pulled in.
He immediately saw a little girl, who looked like she was in a life-threatening condition. Someone was carrying out CPR and Mr Garvey took a defibrillator from the ambulance and attached the pads to the child.
Conor Garvey who gave evidence in the trial of how he came across the scene on Parnell Square
He told the court the child had a laceration on her chest with blood oozing out rather than spurting, indicating there was very little pressure in the heart. She had no pulse and didn’t appear to be breathing, he said.
The defibrillator indicated that there was no electrical activity from her heart and advised against carrying out a shock. When advanced paramedics arrived, Mr Garvey let them continue the treatment.
Peter Harper, a consultant anaesthetist at Temple Street Children’s Hospital, said he was cycling to a meeting when he came across the scene and was directed to the little girl.
He said it was clear she needed to be brought to an operating theatre immediately because he said chest compressions would not achieve anything unless the blood loss was stopped.
Dr Mike Boyle, head of the Rotunda’s neo natal department had rushed to the scene. He told the court the little girl “looked grey” and had no pulse.
Dr Boyle described how he ran to Temple Street hospital to alert the Emergency Department
He said another doctor, Lisa Corley, had arranged for blood to be brought from the lab at the Rotunda. He said they went against all protocols and “just ran with things”.
He and Dr Harper spoke and realised the little girl had no time to go anywhere else other than Temple Street, even though that hospital had no heart surgeons.
Dr Boyle ran to Temple Street, firstly telling the Emergency Department there that they should not delay by taking her. He then ran up to an operating theatre in the hospital asking them to make space for her. He asked a colleague to call the Mater Hospital and get them to send a heart surgeon.
He told the court he thought the little girl was dead.
Dr Harper performed a blood transfusion on the five-year-old in the ambulance on the way to Temple Street where she went directly to the operating theatre. He continued to work on her until she went into intensive care.
Fire fighters and advanced paramedics described scenes of chaos at Parnell Square and gave evidence of trying to help those injured.
Brian Mulvany said when he arrived, he saw a little girl on her back on the ground being treated by paramedics. He told the court her pink shoes stood out and he still remembered them to this day.
He checked on Riad Bouchaker who was lying on the ground and seemed to be unconscious and he helped Ms Flynn who was sitting on steps nearby, injured and in distress.
Another firefighter, David Hosback, said he had a vivid memory of the runners the little girl was wearing as well as a bag nearby.
Parnell Square was cordoned off after the incident on 23 November 2023
“Within 30 minutes of it happening we were watching footage of the incident.”
Gardaí told the court about the evidence they had gathered during their investigation.
Detective Sergeant Padraig Cleary said they got CCTV footage from a hotel just beside the school and within 30 minutes of it happening, he said they were watching footage of the incident.
He told the court he could see on the footage that Mr Bouchaker had removed his backpack and left it at the bus stop so he immediately asked a garda to retrieve it.
The backpack was shown to the jury and the court heard it contained a cover for a 24cm kitchen carving knife.
The black-handled knife was also shown to the jurors as well as coats belonging to two of the injured children.
A small dark green coat had three holes in its hood, the court heard, and the navy coat with pink lining belonging to the most seriously injured girl had been cut open by paramedics trying to treat her.
They jury watched an hour long compilation of the CCTV footage collected by gardaí.
This began with Mr Bouchaker leaving the hostel he was staying in just after 11am. He is also seen at the Ilac Centre in Dublin, discussing some documents with another man and later ripping up some paper and throwing it away.
He visits a premises at 8-9 Talbot Street before heading to the area around Parnell Square, in particular the back of an English language school beside the primary school.
The compilation shown to the jury also included the footage of the incident itself.
Detective Sergeant Padraig Cleary told the court gardaí arrested Mr Bouchaker on 20 December
Sergeant Cleary said Mr Bouchaker was brought to the Mater Hospital after the attack. He said gardaí had gone with him, to gather evidence, but also to provide reassurance to staff at the hospital.
He said they knew the incident this man had allegedly been involved in and were nervous.
Sgt Cleary gave evidence of a number of meetings between gardaí and hospital staff in the following weeks as gardaí waited to arrest Mr Bouchaker.
On 27 November, he said they were informed that Mr Bouchaker did not have major damage to his head, and hadn’t suffered trauma to his brain, nor did he require surgical intervention.
On 7 December, he said they were told Mr Bouchaker needed to be assessed for 28 days as he had suffered post-traumatic amnesia.
That period ended on 20 December. Mr Bouchaker was assessed and deemed fit to be discharged.
Sgt Cleary said he and a French-Arabic translator went to his room just after 7am and told him he was being arrested for attempted murder. He was then brought to Mountjoy Garda Station.
“Two chapters left”
Mr Justice Tony Hunt told the jurors there were “two chapters” left in the prosecution evidence. He said they would hear evidence about Mr Bouchaker’s arrest and interviews with gardaí and there would then be a “brief medical chapter”.
The judge praised how efficiently the case had been run and told the jury it was “not always like this”. He said they had been told the case would finish by 10 July and he assured them it would not go beyond that date.
The trial will continue on Monday.