LAST UPDATE | 19 Jun

A GARDA PRESENCE was needed when Riad Bouchaker was taken to hospital because staff knew that he was alleged to have been involved in the stabbing of a child and they were nervous, the Central Criminal Court has heard.

A 24cm carving knife that was recovered from the scene of the stabbing was also shown to the jury today.

Detective Sergeant Padraig Cleary told prosecutor Karl Finnegan SC that gardaí attended the Mater Hospital during a 28-day period following the alleged Parnell Square knife attacks that left one child with a severe brain injury due to blood loss.

Riad Bouchaker (52), 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 crèche worker Leanne Flynn, at Parnell Square East in Dublin City on 23 November 2023.

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

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his trial is expected to last up to five weeks.

Det Sgt Cleary told the court officers were there partly to gather Mr Bouchaker’s belongings or evidence samples but also as “reassurance for staff at the hospital”.

He added: “They knew the incident he was alleged to have been involved in and people were nervous. So we retained a garda presence at the hospital for that purpose.”

Details of arrest

Det Sgt Cleary said he later learned that the accused had post-traumatic amnesia which required a 28-day assessment.

On 19 December, which was 27 days after the accused’s hospitalisation, Det Sgt Cleary said he had a meeting with a consultant psychiatrist who told him that the assessment would be carried out the following day.

At 6.45am on 20 December, Det Sgt Cleary and other gardaí attended St Peter’s Ward in the Mater Hospital with a French Arabic translator.

The consultant carried out the assessment and informed gardaí that Mr Bouchaker was being discharged. Det Sgt Cleary went to Mr Bouchaker’s room and, with the help of the translator, explained to him that he was arresting him for attempted murder and was going to take him to Mountjoy Garda Station.

They arrived at Mountjoy at 7.15am, the witness said, where Mr Bouchaker was introduced to the jailer.

Det Sgt Cleary also told the court that on the day of the alleged stabbings, he and other gardaí were able to watch CCTV footage of the incident within 30 minutes of it happening.

He said he noticed in the footage that the suspect had removed a backpack moments before the attack and left it at a bus stop. He sent gardaí to photograph the backpack and other items, including a knife, that were found nearby.

Det Sgt Cleary said he also noted that two children who Mr Bouchaker is alleged to have attempted to murder were being treated inside a nearby building. He said he made arrangements for those children who had not been injured to meet their parents in a laneway to the back of the building.

Detective Garda Raymond Lee told Mr Finnegan that inside the rucksack that was discarded at the bus stop, gardaí found a cover for a 24 cm carving knife.

Det Gda Lee showed the jury a jacket with red stains on the inside of the hood that gardaí believe was worn by a girl who is alleged to have been assaulted by Mr Bouchaker.

He also showed the jury strands of hair said to have been cut from the head of another alleged victim.

The trial has previously heard that a member of the public removed the knife from the scene and put it over a railing into the Garden of Remembrance, across the street from where the incident had happened.

Detective Garda Ian Walsh showed the knife to the jury. irishphotodesk.ie irishphotodesk.ie

Detective Garda Ian Walsh told Mr Finnegan that after the knife had been photographed, he placed it in a protective tube.

He today removed the knife from the tube and showed it to the jury.

‘I thought she was dead’

Earlier, a consultant told the court that doctors “went against protocols and just ran with things” as they tried to save the life of a five-year-old girl with no pulse who had been stabbed in the heart during the attack. 

Dr Michael Boyle, the head of the neonatal department at the Rotunda Hospital, said he believed the little girl was dead when he saw her “grey” skin and failed to find a pulse despite the attempts of paramedics to revive her using CPR.

Dr Boyle told prosecuting counsel Carol Doherty BL that he came upon the scene after hearing about a stabbing on Parnell Square East, close to the Rotunda Hospital where he was working. He found lots of people there and his own neonatal transport team attending to the girl after they were flagged down on their way to the Rotunda.

The child, he said, looked grey and paramedics had placed drains in her chest and were doing CPR to try to massage the heart. He said Dr Peter Harper, a paediatric anaesthetist from Temple Street Hospital, “fortuitously” happened upon the scene and helped to put a breathing tube into the girl’s airways.

When paramedics paused their chest compressions, Dr Boyle said he checked for a pulse at the girl’s femoral artery but found nothing.

Another doctor from the Rotunda had ordered blood to be sent immediately, and the decision was taken to carry out a transfusion in the ambulance.

He said they “went against protocols and just ran with things” because they wanted to act as quickly as possible. They decided to take the girl to the nearest hospital at Temple Street, even though they knew there was no cardiothoracic surgeon there.

She didn’t have time to go anywhere else.

Dr Boyle said he needed to bypass the emergency department because that would have delayed her getting to the operating theatre. While the ambulance transported the little girl, Dr Boyle ran to Temple St and told the emergency staff that the patient was not to come to them.

He then ran to the operating theatre to make space and asked a colleague to call the Mater hospital to get them to send a heart surgeon immediately.

Ms Doherty asked what Dr Boyle thought when he couldn’t find a pulse at the girl’s femoral artery. “I thought she was dead,” he said.