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Creche worker, Leanne Flynn, has described the moment she saw Riad Bouchaker begin “jabbing ferociously” with a knife at a line of children in her care on the 23rd of November 2023 on Parnell Square.
Flynn, who sustained serious injuries after she grabbed Bouchaker from behind after he began to stab at the line of children, told a jury at the Central Criminal Court that she was aware of a man standing at the bus stop outside the school who was “at his bag” in a manner that suggested he was “looking for something” before he moved towards the children and she noticed a knife in his hand.
“While I was zipping up [boy’s coat], he [Bouchaker] attempted to walk towards the children,” she said, adding that he came towards [name of five-year-old girl] in a crouched motion,” before “he very hurriedly just started very ferociously stabbing her.”
When prosecuting counsel, Carl Finnegan SC, asked Ms Flynn how many times she had witnessed the “jabbing”, she said, “multiple” while the other children were still close by.
“I let a shout to get away from the children and went and grabbed him from behind,” she said, adding that she had grabbed the back of his jacket.
She said that when she grabbed Bouchaker, he turned around and she saw he had “sallow skin, he was fat, he had very big eyes, darkish hair,” she said.
Ms Flynn said that Bouchaker, who denies all charges, “looked kind of confused, almost like he wasn’t expecting an adult ot someone big to approach him.”
She said she “swung” him and then ended up in a “tussle” in which she pulled him away from the children before he moved back towards them, swinging the knife.
When Mr Finnegan asked Ms Flynn what happened to her in the midst of the struggle, she said, “He stabbed me.”
She described not immediately realising that she had been stabbed, but said she felt “something wet”.
“It didn’t register that I was hurt, he went to try and go back to the children again,” she said, adding, “I went back over and grabbed him a second time.” She said that some of the kids had moved away at this stage and that others had “frozen”.
Ms Flynn said, “I let a scream, ‘Somebody help me! He has a knife!'” and described telling the kids to “run” while “grabbing” others to pull them away from Bouchaker.
When asked what area the “slashing or the jabbing was”, she said, [child’s name] was the first child, she seemed to be the person who got most of the jabbing.”
She said she could not tell where the child had been wounded as “there was so much blood on her face and her neck.”
Ms Flynn said that she told the kids to move a couple of doors up and that she was “afraid they would go to the main road”.
At this stage, she said she was “getting lightheaded and finding it hard to breathe.”
While sitting on the steps of the St George Hotel, she said she was aware of a “big commotion” and that “loads of adults started intervening” and “surrounding the man”.
When she realised she had been stabbed, she said an elderly man and a lady from the hotel came up to her and asked if they could help. She described asking the lady to take the children into the hotel and to keep them there until Pamela, the creche manager, came.
She described being brought to the Mater Hospital, where she remained for a month. Ms Flynn said she sustained “multiple injuries”, including a severed diaphragm, two collapsed lungs, having to have her spleen removed, and an injury to her stomach. She said she underwent two emergency surgeries.
Counsel for Riad Bouchaker, who assured Ms Flynn that he would not be advancing an argument that someone other than his client had attacked her and the children, asked the witness if it was “fair” to categorise the incident into three phases, to which she agreed.
He commended Ms Flynn for her “extraordinary courage” as she had “grabbed” and “tangled with” his client.
Counsel asked the witness why she had used the word “jabbing” to describe the actions with the knife, before she said she selected that word because Bouchaker was “physically jabbing like this ferociously,” which had happened “over and over again”.
Counsel then suggested that Mr Bouchaker had “reasonable full access to a number of children in those terrible seconds” and that the weapon was “an utterly terrifying knife” and “you could run that knife straight through the body of a five-year-old child.”
After suggesting that his client looked “frantic” when he was turned around by Ms Flynn, he suggested Bouchaker’s countenance suggested that there was “something wrong with him”; however, Ms Flynn did not accept this.
“He looked confused, like I disturbed him”, like he wasn’t expecting me to grab him, she said.
Counsel suggested that it would be “irrational” for anyone attacking children with a knife to be surprised at an adult interviewing, and probed as to whether Ms Flynn had the impression that his client was deliberately targeting the other children or if their injuries had been incidental.
Accepting that it may not have been Bouchaker’s aim to harm her, Ms Flynn said it was, “very clear that he just wanted to be at the children.”
She said that he “went back towards the children” and was “swinging” the knife after stabbing her.
The trial continues.
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