Mother of child stabbed in Parnell Square attack recalls moment she was told daughter was stabbed

Eoin Reynolds

A mother broke down in tears as she told a Central Criminal Court trial about the moment her then five-year-old child's creche owner phoned her to say her daughter had been stabbed in the chest on a Dublin street.

The mother, who cannot be named to protect her child's identity, later asked surgeons if her child was dead after they revealed she had suffered major blood loss from a stab wound to the heart.

She told the trial of Riad Bouchaker (52), who denies attempting to murder her child and two others, that her daughter is now in a wheelchair and communicates only by blinking.

Bouchaker, of no fixed address, is on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with the attempted murder of two girls and one boy, and assault causing serious harm to a care worker, at Parnell Square East in Dublin City on November 23rd 2023.

He is further charged with assaulting two other children and one adult and with producing a knife in a manner likely to intimidate.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his trial before a jury of nine men and three women is expected to last up to five weeks.

The mother of the first alleged victim told Karl Finnegan SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, that she was at work in Temple Bar when she received a call from the owner of her child's creche at exactly 1.45pm. The creche owner was crying and told her to come quickly as her daughter had been stabbed.

She ran to Parnell Square and from the spire on O'Connell Street, she said she could see ambulances, fire trucks and squad cars inside a garda cordon.

She said: "I stopped breathing for a second, but then I kept running until I got there."

She said she saw Bouchaker being put into an ambulance and a crowd of emergency personnel surrounding her daughter.

She said: "I could see her pink backpack and her pink shoes and I stopped and I let them work because I couldn't do anything for her at that moment."

After about 10 minutes, she saw them put her daughter in the back of an ambulance to take her to Temple St Children's Hospital. The witness called her husband and told him to go to Temple St and called her mother to ask her to pray.

She met her husband at the hospital, and surgeons told them they were trying to control the blood loss. She said: "The first question I asked the surgeon was, 'is she dead'?"

She said doctors carried out emergency surgery to stop the bleeding from the right ventricle of her heart and told her the girl had suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain for about 40 minutes, which caused severe brain damage.

She was in a critical condition and remained in the Intensive Care Unit for three weeks.

She said her daughter's motor skills have been severely impacted and she is fed by a tube to her stomach while she relearns how to swallow. She is non-verbal and can answer only yes or no by blinking. She requires medication to help her sleep and if she gets excited, she has to be sedated.

The mother of the second girl Bouchaker is alleged to have attempted to murder said her daughter was six years old at the time.

She said she became aware of an incident when her child's school receptionist phoned her and said there had been a 'fight' and blood had gotten on her daughter.

She later learned that the blood was actually coming from a cut to the back of her daughter's head.

She went to Crumlin Hospital in south Dublin where an ambulance had taken her daughter and discovered that a fragment of the child's skull had been removed. She underwent surgery that night and was discharged the following day.

The father of a then five-year-old boy who is also alleged to have suffered harm having been assaulted by Bouchaker, said he noticed a "slash injury" across his son's chest that continued as a graze under his right arm.

He was taken to Temple St to have his wound cleaned and dressed before being discharged with a dose of antibiotics.

Under cross-examination, the father told the defence senior counsel that his son knew he had been grabbed during the incident but didn't know he had been cut.

The father of a girl who is also alleged to have been assaulted by Bouchaker said he discovered that his daughter had a cut to the collar of her coat. The girl's mother said she discovered her daughter had soiled herself and appeared to be in shock.

Earlier on Wednesday, Finnegan opened the trial by telling the jury that the evidence will prove that Bouchaker carried a knife to Parnell Square in Dublin and stabbed children, targeting their upper bodies.

Counsel said that to return a verdict of guilty of attempted murder, the jury must be satisfied that the accused man intended to kill when he attacked the children.

While such an intention is "rarely proved by a person announcing it", Finnegan said the jury could infer his intention from the weapon he used, where he directed the blows, how often the blows were delivered and from the surrounding circumstances.

He said the prosecution would ask the jury to consider the use of a knife, the selection of children, the targeting of their upper bodies, including the neck and chest areas, the repeated stabbing movements and the fact that members of the public had to intervene.

Mr Finnegan said the jury would also hear from Bouchaker's garda interviews that prior to the attacks, he said he was upset that a social welfare application had been refused.

The accused said he was not in his right state of mind and told detectives he knew he did something but didn't know what and that he did not intend to harm or kill the children.

Bouchaker repeatedly said he was "sick, not in his right state of mind and he did not mean to kill anyone," Mr Finnegan said.

Counsel further told the jury that in 2021, Bouchaker had brain surgery having suffered a benign brain tumour. When members of the public intervened at Parnell Square, Finnegan said the accused suffered a further head injury that required hospitalisation in the immediate aftermath.

He now has an acquired brain injury which has an impact on his ability to sustain attention and concentration and requires the court to take frequent breaks during his trial. Finnegan said the trial judge, Tony Hunt, has found the accused fit to stand trial and there is no defence being put forward to suggest he would qualify for a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Finnegan told the jury that the case has attracted considerable media attention and it is likely that they will have seen and heard public commentary and television descriptions of what may have happened.

He told the jury to put that "entirely out of your minds" and to decide the case solely on the evidence they see and hear in court.

He told them not to rely on media reports, social media or public opinion or to be swayed by emotion, sympathy or outrage.

Describing the events, Finnegan said on the afternoon of November 23rd 2023, a group of children had gathered on Parnell Square to be brought to a creche where they would be picked up by their parents.

He said Bouchaker approached the children, produced a knife and began stabbing or attempting to stab them.

One of the children's carers noticed Mr Bouchaker and saw the knife, Finnegan said. She will say that she grabbed Mr Bouchaker from behind and shouted at him to 'get away' before realising she had also been stabbed.

Doctors would later find that she had suffered a laceration to her left side and required surgery at Dublin's Mater Hospital.

Members of the public intervened and removed the knife, Finnegan said, and when gardai arrived, they found Mr Bouchaker lying on the ground and discovered the knife a short distance away.

Passersby flagged down an ambulance that happened to be near the scene, and when they assessed the first child they found she had no pulse, was not breathing and had a large laceration on her chest.

They began resuscitation until members of the Dublin Fire Brigade arrived and took over.

The trial continues on Thursday before the jury of nine men and three women.