Doctor tells court he thought Parnell Square victim was dead

A doctor who arrived at the scene of an alleged attempted murder on Parnell Square in Dublin has told a court he thought a young girl who had been injured was dead.

The Central Criminal Court in Dublin has heard multiple children and an adult were injured in the incident, including a girl who is now in a wheelchair and non-verbal.

Riad Bouchaker, aged 52 and of no fixed address, is charged with the attempted murder of two girls and one boy, and assault causing serious harm to an adult, at Parnell Square East in Dublin City on November 23 2023.

Bouchaker is also charged with assaulting three other people, and with producing a 36cm kitchen knife.

He has pleaded not guilty to all eight charges.

On day eight of the trial, the jury of nine men and three women heard from Mike Boyle, a neonatal consultant at the Rotunda Hospital on Parnell Square.

Under questioning from Karl Finnegan SC for the prosecution, Mr Boyle described how he immediately ran to the scene upon hearing about the incident.

He said a neonatal transport team wearing distinctive bright red jackets was also there.

The team was made up of trainees and nurses and he said he had a “responsibility to make sure they were ok”.

Mr Boyle said he came across a little girl lying on the ground who looked grey, with drains in her chest.

Chest compressions were ongoing, he said, as “they were trying to massage the heart”.

He said he was present for an unsuccessful attempt to insert a breathing tube into the girl’s airway and felt for a femoral pulse in her leg, which would have indicated if her heart was working, but could not find one.

Asked about the girl’s condition when he was treating her, Mr Boyle said: “I thought she was dead.”

Mr Boyle said his team “went against all protocols” and just “ran with it” and got a universal type of blood from the Rotunda to be given to the girl.

A paediatric consultant, Peter Harper, from the nearby Temple Street hospital also arrived at the scene and Mr Boyle said they believed the girl would need to go straight to surgery.

Mr Boyle said he ran to Temple Street hospital to tell the emergency department she would not be going there and ran to the operating room to make sure it could be available to treat her.

As that hospital does not have a heart surgeon, he said he asked a colleague to phone the Mater hospital to see if they could “send a heart surgeon down”.

The jury also heard from a woman who said she saw Riad Bouchaker stabbing childcare worker Leanne Flynn.

Corraine Allen said she was leaving a school on Parnell Square at around 1.35 pm when she saw a man and a woman in a “struggle”.

In cross-examination, defence counsel said there was “no doubt” the man was Bouchaker and the woman was Ms Flynn.

During questioning by prosecuting barrister Carol Doherty, Ms Allen said Bouchaker was pulling on Ms Flynn’s arm “pretty aggressively” before she saw “a really large knife in his hand”.

“It was quite long, it was longer than your average kitchen knife”, she said.

“It was a clean blade, it didn’t have any jagged edges on it.”

She described Bouchaker as “quite forcefully pulling her, so she was pulling back as well”.

She said the shoulder of Ms Flynn’s clothing was “pulled down”, and said she “saw the man stabbing the woman in the side”.

“He stabbed her a few times,” she said, adding “she must have fell to the ground” and “he walked away after that”.

There was a “line of children” at the railings, she said, and Bouchaker then went towards the middle of the group and “put his hand on one of the kids’ shoulders” and “he might have gestured with the knife”, but said the railings were partly blocking her view.

Ms Allen ran into the school “panicking” and told teachers: “He is going to stab the kids.”

During cross-examination, Ms Allen said certain aspects of the event are “ingrained in my brain forever, I’ll never forget it”.

When the defence barrister stated that “you never told Gardaí you saw the woman being stabbed”, Ms Allen replied: “No, I did.

“I remember telling the guard where she was stabbed and he confirmed that was the case.”

When challenged that it would be “pretty unusual” if the Garda didn’t write what she had said down, she replied: “I 100% said it to the guard.”

She agreed with the defence barrister that the guard was “taking great care” and added: “I would always think the Guards are professional.”

Ms Allen was handed a copy of her statement to Gardaí and part of it was read to the court.

In it, she said Bouchaker “was trying to get to” Ms Flynn’s side.

Asked if her assertion that Ms Flynn had been stabbed was in her Garda statement, she replied: “In the paper in front of me, that is not written.”

She also agreed that after she had given her statement to Gardaí, it was read back to her and she had the opportunity to correct it before she signed it.

Questioned about her memory and if her recollection of the “stabbing” might have been affected by talking about the event and later reading that Ms Flynn had been stabbed, she replied: “No, I saw it.”

A number of Gardaí and firefighters who were called to the scene also gave evidence on Friday.

Detective Sergeant Padraig Cleary, based at Mountjoy Garda Station said he arrived at Parnell Square at around 2pm when the initial chaos had “calmed down some little bit”.

He said the main trauma injuries were being dealt with “by the right people” and so he ensured there was a Garda member in each ambulance going to hospital.

Mr Cleary said he met with another detective sergeant and became aware Riad Bouchaker had been identified and “removed” to the Mater Hospital and had “received some injuries”.

Parents had started to gather at the cordon, he said, and those of the injured children were brought to them.

Other pupils were brought out through a back entrance of the school to be collected.

Mr Cleary also described the initial stages of evidence gathering, the majority of witnesses on the scene were “too traumatised” to make statements on the day, but he said Gardaí took their details in order to follow up.

He also said an operation to gather CCTV evidence had started and “within 30 minutes” of the incident he was watching footage that had been recorded by cameras from a nearby hotel.

Bouchaker had been handcuffed at the scene to enable a “proper search”, he said, but he had not been arrested.

He said Gardaí were at the hospital with Bouchaker to make sure evidence was preserved, and to “reassure hospital staff” who knew he was alleged to have been involved in a stabbing.

Over the following weeks, Mr Cleary said he continued to monitor how the children and Leanne Flynn were doing and visited the hospitals on a daily basis.

On November 27 2023 he said he attended a meeting at the Mater Hospital with the team looking after Bouchaker and was informed he did not have major damage to his head, his brain had not suffered trauma and he did not need surgery.

He said efforts were made to establish Bouchaker’s level of English and his GP was contacted to establish his “base level” of English to understand his recovery.

In another meeting on December 7 2023, Mr Cleary said he was told Bouchaker was undergoing a 28-day assessment for post traumatic amnesia, which would end on December 20.

When Bouchaker was discharged that day, Mr Cleary said he attended St Peter’s ward in the Mater Hospital with a translator and two other Gardaí and arrested the accused for attempted murder.

Ian Walsh, who was based at Store Street Station, said when he arrived on the scene he saw a man lying on the floor with blood on his head, who was being tended to.

He said a member of the public told him “it is over there”, implying she was talking about a knife.

The woman brought him over to a tree on the opposite side of the street where the knife was and he instructed another Garda to stay there because of the suspicion it had been used.

It was photographed, he said and, wearing gloves, he picked it up and put it into a protective tube.

A large knife with a black handle was then shown to the jury and Mr Walsh confirmed it was the one he had collected from the scene.

Under cross examination, Mr Walsh agreed it had been preserved in a “forensically secure manner” and that there was no question a Garda would “wipe” a knife.

“It went into the tube exactly as it was found”, he added.

Exhibits officer Garda Raymond Lee also appeared before the court and outlined evidence that was logged and tracked during the case.

During his testimony a number of items taken from the scene were shown to the court, including two children’s coats.

The first belonged to the most seriously injured girl and was a pink coat with a black lining and animal ears on the hood.

It had been badly damaged and, in cross examination, Mr Lee said this was “quite possibly” caused by paramedics when they removed her clothes while she was being treated for her injuries.

The other, belonging to the injured boy, had three holes in the hood, Mr Lee said, two of which went through both the outer and inner lining.

He also said there was a red stain inside the hood on the left hand side.

Other exhibits included a backpack which contained a cover for a 24cm carving knife.

Before they were sent home for the weekend, the jury was told there had been an “efficient running of the case” and it was still on schedule.

The trial will resume on Monday.