A jury will return to the Central Criminal Court on Wednesday to resume considering its verdict in the trial of Riad Bouchaker who denies the attempted murder of three children at Dublin’s Parnell Square.
When the nine men and three women went out to begin their deliberations just before 3pm on Tuesday, Judge Tony Hunt asked them to “put emotions firmly to one side” and be “objective”, “rational”, “logical” and “forensic” in assessing the evidence.
The only verdict he would accept at this stage is a unanimous one, the judge said.
Just after 4pm, he sent the jury home and asked them to return to court at 10.30am on Wednesday.
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Tuesday was the 15th day of the trial of Bouchaker (52), a native of Algeria of no fixed abode, over the incident at Parnell Square East on November 23rd 2023.
In addition to the attempted murder charges, Bouchaker denies five other charges in connection with the incident: assault causing serious harm to childcare worker Leanne Flynn; assault of two other children and a trainee chef, Alan Guille, who intervened; and producing a 36cm knife capable of inflicting serious injury.
During a pretrial hearing, two psychiatrists disagreed on Bouchaker’s fitness to plead arising from an acquired brain injury, caused by pre-existing cognitive impairment combined with injuries suffered during interventions by members of the public at Parnell Square. He spent about three weeks in hospital after the incident.
Hunt ruled he was fit to stand trial with the assistance of an interpreter and an intermediary.
Leanne Flynn and parents and family members of some of the injured children were back in court on Tuesday for the final stages of the trial.
During his charge, the judge told the jury the available verdicts in relation to a then five-year-old girl who suffered severe injuries are guilty of attempted murder or guilty of assault causing serious harm. There was “a theoretical possibility” of not guilty on either charge.
The jury has heard the child was stabbed in the heart, was regarded as clinically dead at the scene and required emergency surgery to save her life. Now aged seven, she has severe brain and other injuries and requires 24-hour care for the rest of her life.
The judge said verdicts available in relation to the two other attempted murder counts – concerning a then six-year-old girl and five-year-old boy who suffered non-penetrative lacerations – are guilty of attempted murder, guilty of assault causing harm or not guilty of either, also a “theoretical possibility”.
The judge explained the other charges before proceeding to summarise some of the evidence.
CCTV indicated the time frame for the incident was about 15 seconds from Bouchaker moving towards the children and when the knife was seen on the ground, he said.
The jury had heard from 16 eyewitnesses who had done their best and the CCTV was a “useful yardstick” against which they could measure the eyewitness evidence, he said.
In his view, the closest eyewitness was Leanne Flynn, who said she was fixing a child’s coat when Bouchaker approached the children and began stabbing and “jabbing ferociously”, said Hunt.
Everyone else “was going about their business on an ordinary day at Parnell Square”.
No one was expecting to see “such shocking and horrendous things”, that was also relevant to what people remember and how they remember it, the judge said.
The trial, he told them, must be decided on the evidence and had nothing to do with flag-waving, social media or burning vehicles.
He said the jury also had memos of Garda interviews carried out with Bouchaker on December 20th and 21st 2023 following his arrest in hospital.
The jury went out at 2.49pm but were brought back to court at 2.58pm when the judge told them the answers Bouchaker had given to questions asked by gardaí were evidence, not the questions themselves or any theories in those questions.
The judge brought them back to court at 4.06pm, saying he was sending them home after a long day.
He was told the jury wanted to read what the judge had said about attempted murder, assault intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm, and assault causing harm.
They also wanted the closing speeches by the prosecution and defence and the judge’s summary of the evidence of four witnesses: Leanne Flynn; Prof Yvonne O’Dowd of Forensic Science Ireland; trainee chef Alan Lorena Guille, who said he took the knife from Bouchaker; and an eyewitness, Corinne Allen.
