A receptionist at a language school on Parnell Square said the street outside was \u201cin chaos\u201d during an incident in November 2023, a woman was screaming \u201cthe kid is dead\u201d and a man was lying on the ground \u201ccovered in blood\u201d.<\/p>\n
Luciana Yaya, a native of Argentina, was giving evidence on Friday in the continuing trial of Riad Bouchaker, who has denied eight offences, including the attempted murder of three children, during an incident at Parnell Square East on November 23rd, 2023.<\/p>\n
Yaya told prosecuting counsel Karl Finnegan a man had come into the language school about 12.30pm on the date in question. <\/p>\n
He was wearing a brown coat and a beanie and told her he was waiting for \u201cmy friend and the kid\u201d. When she told him there were no children in the language school, he had left.<\/p>\n
She later heard screaming and when she went outside, the street was \u201cin chaos\u201d.<\/p>\n
She thought there had been a car accident because she saw a bike on the ground.<\/p>\n
Becoming upset, she said there was a woman screaming \u201cthe kid is dead\u201d and saw an ambulance going towards \u201ca little kid\u201d. <\/p>\n
She saw people trying to hit a man on the ground and \u201ctwo or three ladies\u201d trying to stop that, saying \u201cno, we don\u2019t do things like that here, we have to wait for the police\u201d. <\/p>\n
When she saw the man\u2019s face, she thought it was the man who had been in her building earlier. Under cross-examination, she was \u201csure\u201d she had seen a scar on the left side of the man\u2019s face, near his eyebrow, and was not mixed up. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know what I saw,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She agreed the exchange she had had with the man who had come into her school earlier suggested he had some fluency in English.<\/p>\n
She agreed it was a highly fraught, difficult situation and the man on the ground seemed \u201cwoozy\u201d. <\/p>\n
Friday was the fourth day of the trial of Bouchaker (52), a native of Algeria of no fixed abode, who has denied attempting to murder three children, two girls and a boy, on Parnell Square East. <\/p>\n
He has also denied assault causing harm to two other children and to a passerby who intervened to assist, and denied a charge of assault causing serious harm to a care worker. He denied a further charge of producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury, a 36cm kitchen knife. <\/p>\n
Finnegan has told the jury the prosecution case is that Bouchaker\u2018s actions at Parnell Square, including \u201cstabbing and jabbing\u201d with a knife, \u201ctargeting\u201d young children and the need for members of the public to stop him, showed he intended to kill.<\/p>\n
One child, a five-year-old girl, suffered severe brain injuries requiring immediate surgery and is now non-verbal and using a wheelchair, the jury heard. <\/p>\n
Bouchaker told garda\u00ed during interviews he knew he had done something wrong but was sick and not in his right mind at the time and had no intention to kill anyone, the jury was told. <\/p>\n
He had said he was angry about being refused a social welfare payment that day and had a knife.<\/p>\n
Bouchaker, the jury heard, had a head operation in 2021. He suffered a head injury during the incident at Parnell Square and now has an acquired brain injury. <\/p>\n
Prior to the trial, Judge Tony Hunt found he was fit to plead and told the jury special mental health defences are not available to him.<\/p>\n
The jury has viewed a montage of CCTV footage related to what An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na believed were the movements of a male, described as \u201cthe suspect\u201d, before and during the incident at Parnell Square East. <\/p>\n
On Friday, a bloodstained beige jacket worn by a childcare worker who suffered stabbing injuries during the incident was shown to the jury. They were also shown two jackets worn by two children who suffered injuries during the incident. <\/p>\n
One of the children\u2019s jackets had some blood staining, Garda Niall Ormsby, a scenes of crime examiner, said.<\/p>\n
A booklet of photos was provided to the jury, including a photo showing a backpack, believed to belong to the suspect, on the ground. <\/p>\n
The witness agreed that knife packaging for a 24cm carbon knife was found in the backpack and photos were taken of them. <\/p>\n
Patricia Byrne said she was shopping on the day in Dublin city centre and was in Mary Street when she heard \u201csome disturbance\u201d.<\/p>\n
She heard a man, \u201cquite aggressive\u201d in his words, saying: \u201cShit Irish, shit f***ing Irish\u201c.<\/p>\n
He went into between a group of six or seven people, English, Welsh, Scottish, and said the same thing: \u201cShit Irish, shit f***ing Irish\u201d. They were laughing and she told them it was \u201cnot funny\u201d. <\/p>\n
The trial continues on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A receptionist at a language school on Parnell Square said the street outside was \u201cin chaos\u201d during an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[42851,615,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-498981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-central-criminal-court","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}