A Brazilian Deliveroo driver says he saw Riad Bouchaker (52) pick up a five-year-old girl with his left arm before stabbing her up to four times in the chest with a large kitchen knife.<\/p>\n
Caio Benecio, who was working as a Deliveroo driver in the Parnell Square area on the 23rd of November 2023, told a jury at the Central Criminal Court that he was riding his motorbike when he heard a commotion, which he initially thought was \u201ca drug user fight\u201d, which he said is \u201ccommon\u201d in the city centre.<\/p>\n
Benecio said that when he got closer to the scene, he saw a woman and a man \u201cfighting\u201d over a little girl, saying \u201cthe big man was pulling the little girl from the woman\u201d when he \u201crealised something was not common\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw many people running\u201d, he said, adding that when he got closer, \u201cI saw the man grab the girl with his left hand, he pulled her from the woman and then I saw him with the right hand with a big, sharp knife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe started to stab the girl in the chest,\u201d he said, adding that he thought there had been \u201clike two or four\u201d stabs.<\/p>\n
Mr Benecio told Carl Finnegan SC, prosecuting, that he \u201ccouldn\u2019t run fast\u201d because of surgery he had on his knee two months earlier, but that he had removed his helmet to \u201cprotect\u201d himself before he \u201chit him [Bouchaker] in the head\u201d with it.<\/p>\n
He said that the accused \u201csaw me coming\u201d and had \u201cone hand on the girl\u201d and the knife in the other, meaning \u201che couldn\u2019t defend himself, so I hit him on the head.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that after striking Bouchaker on the head once, the helmet \u201cslipped\u201d from his hands and fell into the basement area of one of the buildings.<\/p>\n
When Mr Finnegan asked what happened after he hit Bouchaker, he said, \u201cHe fall (sic) on the floor, and then I gave him two of three punches.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I realised he couldn\u2019t react, I saw blood on his mouth, I stopped and stood back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He described a number of other people trying \u201cto hit and kick him\u201d before a woman intervened, saying, \u201cWe are not savage here\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Benecio said he was \u201cin shock\u201d and \u201cshaking\u201d at this point and that he waited for Garda\u00ed to arrive. He said he could not retrieve his helmet from the basement, so he was unable to get back to work driving the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
Counsel for Bouchaker asked the witness if he had seen the beginning of the incident outside the school, before Mr Benecio said the first thing he saw was the man \u201cfight\u201d with the woman.<\/p>\n
Counsel then referred back to a statement Mr Benecio had given to Garda\u00ed in the aftermath of the incident in which he said that he first saw the man and woman fight over one little girl who got away before he saw Bouchaker \u201cgrab another girl\u201d whom he then stabbed in the chest.<\/p>\n
Counsel said that he was not advancing a claim that the witness was \u201clying\u201d or trying to mislead the jury, but simply that his memory may have been marred by the effects of seeing \u201csomething truly shocking\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the account before the jury was \u201cdifferent and clearly different from what you told the police\u201d, adding, \u201cI\u2019m not suggesting that you\u2019re trying to be dishonest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes, when human beings see something truly shocking, the thing itself goes into your memory, but a lot of the background detail gets lost,\u201d he probed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Counsel asked Mr Benecio to describe how the suspect had stabbed the child, whereupon the witness made a physical gesture, which counsel described as \u201cmaking a stabbing gesture into your own stomach area.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c100% he was stabbing her,\u201d Mr Benecio said, agreeing with counsel that this had featured \u201csignificant violence\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brazilian Deliveroo driver says he saw Riad Bouchaker (52) pick up a five-year-old girl with his left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[214623,42,43,214624,214625,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-501715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-caio-benecio","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-parnell-square-stabbing","tag-riad-bocuhaker","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501715","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=501715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}