Ignore those 'shrieking for vengeance' barrister tells jury in Parnell Square attempted murder case

Eoin Reynolds

The jury in the trial of Riad Bouchaker have been told they can return alternative verdicts in relation to the allegation that he attempted to murder three children on Parnell Square in 2023.

The accused man's defence team also asked the jurors to ignore people outside the court "shrieking for vengeance" and urged them to not dismiss the accused as a "monster".

Counsel argued there was no evidence that a less than 1cm long laceration to one boy's neck was caused with a knife, rather than through the ordinary "rough and tumble" of a child's life.

The prosecution told the jury on Monday that Bouchaker's claim that he did not intend to kill or hurt anyone during the incident is "absurd".

Lawyers acting for the 52-year-old, said that in the case of one little girl who suffered severe brain damage due to blood loss after she was stabbed in the heart, the jury could return a verdict of causing serious harm.

In relation to the other attempted murder charges, the accused's counsel said they could find Mr Bouchaker guilty of assault causing harm.

Asking the jury to consider the alternative verdicts, counsel told the nine men and three women of the jury that the prosecution had failed to meet the "extraordinarily high" bar to proving attempted murder.

However, Karl Finnegan SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the evidence the jury has heard "proves beyond reasonable doubt that Riad Bouchaker had the intention to kill children that day". Finnegan asked the jury to look at all the circumstances, including Bouchaker's decision to use a 36cm carving knife to stab children, repeatedly targeting their upper bodies.

Bouchaker, of no fixed address, is charged with the attempted murder of two girls and one boy, and assault causing serious harm to creche worker Leanne Flynn, at Parnell Square East in Dublin City on November 23rd, 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.

'Upsetting evidence'

Finnegan told the jury that despite the upsetting evidence they have heard, it is important to acknowledge and to take comfort from the actions of "good and brave people" from Ireland, France, Brazil and elsewhere who put their lives at risk to help others and to intervene to protect the children. Others, including witness Siobhan Kearney, had also intervened to protect the accused even though he had "created the emergency".

Gardai, doctors and emergency personnel, he said, had shown that they carry out extraordinary work on a daily basis. However, he said the task for the jury is to decide if the prosecution has proven the charges against Riad Bouchaker to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Finnegan said the accused man had cognitive issues at the time of the offence having suffered complications following brain surgery in 2021. However, psychiatrists who assessed him found that a defence of not guilty by reason of insanity was not available to him.

Bouchaker's cognitive difficulties were made worse by blows he received from members of the public on the day of the alleged stabbings.

To prove attempted murder, Finnegan said the prosecution must prove that Bouchaker intended to kill and that he committed some act that could have resulted in death. However, counsel said the prosecution case is that Bouchaker intended to kill any one or more of the children who were standing in line when he approached with a knife in his hand.

In considering Bouchaker's intention, counsel asked the jury to consider the accused's annoyance at a letter refusing him social welfare payments. He then went home where he got a 36cm carving knife, a weapon that Mr Finnegan said is "inherently lethal".

CCTV footage

Counsel asked them to consider the fact that the accused walked to Parnell Square, sought out school children and stood for one minute and 40 seconds at a bus stop awaiting the right moment before hurrying towards them and jabbing at them with the knife. He asked the jury to look at the parts of the body that he targeted and the number and severity of the "strikes and stabs" as shown on CCTV footage.

When Leanne Flynn grabbed Bouchaker's jacket and pulled him away from the children, Finnegan said the accused stabbed her, threw her away and resumed his attack on the children.

Despite anomalies in the accounts given by eyewitnesses, Finnegan said the core of what they saw was consistent - that Bouchaker struck at the children with the knife, making contact with parts of their bodies that could have resulted in death.

That nobody died, Finnegan said, is because Leanne Flynn put herself between the children and the knife, suffering a stab wound to her back that left her with serious injuries. Others punched Bouchaker or struck him with various objects while French teenager Alan Guille removed the knife from the accused's hand. The girl who suffered a knife wound to the heart died at the scene but was revived by emergency responders and kept alive by surgeons and doctors.

"Do not let him [Mr Bouchaker] take comfort from the success of those who stopped him and those who saved the life of the child he stabbed," Finnegan said.

Bouchaker's claim to gardaí that he did not intend to kill or hurt anyone is absurd and is "overwhelmed by his actions," Finnegan said. He suggested Bouchaker had offered gardaí a "lame excuse" that is contradicted by the evidence and by common sense.

If Bouchaker didn't intend to hurt anyone, Finnegan asked the jury to consider why he got a knife, searched for children and waited for the right moment before hurrying towards them while "jabbing ferociously". Why did he stab Leanne Flynn when she intervened and then go back towards the children?, he asked.

"There is no innocent answer," Finnegan said, "the only reasonable conclusion is that he intended to kill or cause harm".

Closing address

In his closing address, Bouchaker's barrister told the jury that this is a case that gives cause for reflection in a "grander and broader way" than otherwise might be the case. Juries, he said, are supposed to be the "best of us" and he asked them to do their job calmly, with intelligence and detachment.

He said that in the wake of the events on Parnell Square, Dublin was "set on fire" by those who sought to turn people against one another and to reduce complex issues to hateful binaries.

Counsel said the best answer to rage and hate is for the jury to go about its business with calm deliberation. "Those people don't ask for nuance," he said. "Their shrieking is for vengeance but vengeance has no place here and their shrieking should find no home in these courts."

He said there is a profound danger that the jury's critical faculties could be overwhelmed by the horror of what happened and a moral abhorrence of the "toxic blend of banal frustration and inexplicable darkness that occupied [Bouchaker's] mind."

But he told the jury there are substantial issues for them to resolve when they consider their verdicts and he asked them to do so with care and caution.

For a finding of attempted murder, counsel said, there must be a clear intention to kill and an attempt to execute that intention. It is not enough, he said, for the accused to have had a "generalised malign" intent or even for him to have posed a "horrific risk of injury".

Counsel told the jury that if the accused's intention was murderous and he positively attempted to kill the children, then the "sickening reality" is that in those seconds after he cast Flynn aside "he would have killed or caused devastating injuries to further children". He said he does not expect the jury to thank Bouchaker that he didn't seriously harm or kill other children, but he asked them to consider his intent given that those children did not suffer serious injuries.

Counsel told the jury that in his garda interviews, Bouchaker had displayed his cognitive impairment by, at times, speaking "gibberish". Mr Bouchaker also failed to appreciate the disconnect between his "trifling" concerns about social welfare or his ailments and what happened on Parnell Square.

The barrister suggested there was no pretence, guile or sophistication in Boucahker's presentation when he maintained throughout that he had not intended to harm anyone.

The alternative verdicts available to the jury, counsel said, are not there to absolve Bouchaker of guilt. They are there, he said, because of the "extraordinarily high bar" for returning a guilty verdict on the attempted murder charges.

He told the jury that Bouchaker's "deeply irrational and abhorrent act" in relation to the girl who suffered a severe brain injury was senseless in its "manifest horror and destruction". But he also asked the jury to consider whether his actions were senseless because Mr Bouchaker was cognitively impaired. He asked the jury whether, given his impairment, the accused had reached the level of intent to sustain a charge of attempted murder.

In relation to the boy that Bouchaker is alleged to have attempted to murder, counsel reminded the jury that the only injury he suffered was a laceration to his neck less than 1cm long which was treated using steristrips.

There was, counsel said, no evidence that injury was caused with a knife rather than through the ordinary "rough and tumble" of a child's life.

Holes in the collar and hood of the child's jacket, he said, were not examined by Forensic Science Ireland to establish whether they were caused by a knife. He asked the jury to "stand back from the horror" and not to convict without evidence.

The girl who is the subject of the other attempted murder charge, counsel said, had suffered an 8cm scalp wound. Counsel suggested that in relation to her, the prosecution had shown an intent to cause harm, but not to kill.

In relation to charges of assault causing harm against two other children, counsel said the evidence falls short. Bouchaker faces a further count of assault causing harm to Alan Guille, a French teenager. Counsel said Mr Guille had shown "gallic indifference" when he described minor scrapes to his finger and face that he believed were caused when he took the knife.

Counsel asked the jury to find that in Guille's case, there was no deliberate infliction of force by Bouchaker on Guille and therefore there was no assault.

The barrister said he is not looking for sympathy for Bouchaker and accepted the families and children will live with this event for the rest of their lives. "I do ask you not to approach him dismissively as some monster," he said. He asked the jury to consider how they would want the case to be judged if it were their loved one who was on trial.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt will continue his charge to the jury on Tuesday.